Heart and Soul
by Atiaran
Summary: The Dovahkiin brings Talvas Fathryon with her as her follower on the "Old Friends" questline to kill Ildari. Female Dovahkiin, named Ingrid; spoilers for the Old Friends questline, obviously.
1. Chapter 1

**Standard disclaimer: **None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bethesda Game Studios. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.

**Author's note: **My first Skyrim story. This one follows the "Old Friends" questline from Dragonborn and was a real pain to write, even worse than "The Divide," though it's shorter. Let's just say I don't think I'll be doing any more point-by-point retellings of questlines for the foreseeable future :P.

For those who are interested (*if* anyone's interested?) my other projects still do include my Fallout 3 / Fallout: New Vegas crossover - yes, it *is* still being worked on - but also a second and probably last Skyrim fic. My guess is my second and last Skyrim fic will be done first, but we'll see. Anyway, just glad to get this off my desk and over with.

Thanks to **LadyKate1** who betaed!

_There was no one like 'im, 'Orse or Foot,  
Nor any o' the guns I knew  
An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died  
Which is just what the best men do._

_So it's knock out your pipes an' follow me,  
An' it's finish up your swipes an' follow me,  
Oh, 'ark to the big drum callin',  
An' follow me - follow me 'ome._

\- "Follow Me 'Ome," Rudyard Kipling

"_I don't think __**anything**__ I've ever done is wrong!"_

\- Homer Simpson, "Natural Born Kissers," _The Simpsons_

The first thing the Dovahkiin did for him once he had agreed to become her follower, was to make him a set of Elven armor. (_Ingrid, Ingrid, _Talvas reminded himself; she had told him to call her "Ingrid," but it was hard to remember.) She had a forge in the basement of her mansion in Raven Rock. Actually it wasn't _her_ mansion; it had originally been the mansion of the Severin family; but the Severins had been discovered plotting against First Councilor Lleril Morvayn and had been exiled. It had been the Dovahkiin that had discovered the plot. She had been given the newly vacant mansion as a reward. _Which means she came out of the whole thing pretty well,_ he mused with a trace of cynicism, before becoming slightly abashed at himself; she had done nothing to justify it.

_So far,_ he thought morbidly.

He had been filled with a queasy sense of dread as she had taken his measurements - whenever Mastor Neloth had done something similar, whatever followed would always be uncomfortable at best, outright painful at worst - but he forced himself to stand quietly, waiting for her to finish. She gave him a wink - looking down at him, she was _so tall,_ tall enough to look an Altmer in the eye - and then retreated to the forge in the basement. Greatly daring, he had asked her if he could watch; Neloth would have snapped at him, but Talvas wanted to learn. And she had agreed.

He watched as she melded moonstone, quicksilver and iron, her face intent in the ruddy light from the glowing coals, shaping cuirass, boots and gauntlets with skilful hammer strokes; he watched as she took the just-cooled pieces to the armor bench and tempered them with more moonstone, giving them strength and resilience. He could tell, looking around her mansion, that she practiced many occupations - alchemy, enchanting - but watching the concentration in her face, it was clear that smithing was her major art form. She made him a dagger too, in the elven style, and when she had seen the hunting bow he carried, she crafted him an elven bow and set of arrows, shaping them as well with her cool precision.

She made him no helmet, but selected a circlet instead from the safe where she kept pieces of jewelry. He thought none of them were hers, for she never wore them, but he hadn't quite the courage to ask her where they all had come from. She also selected a plain golden pendant and ring, and then took the whole lot over to the enchanter, a huge affair as elaborate as Master Neloth's own. When she set to work, Talvas understood at once why Neloth had refused to teach her enchantment: he had claimed it was because he did not want her to become better than him, but Talvas knew enough about enchantment to see that she was _already_ better than Neloth, better than any enchanter he had ever seen.

She took seven black soul gems from the barrel where she kept them, and that chilled him a little, for he had no idea where or how she ever could have obtained so many filled black soul gems -

_Perhaps she filled them herself,_ a ghostly voice whispered in the back of his mind.

\- and for the eighth piece, the gilded cuirass, she laid out an eight-rayed item he had never seen before, but had heard of in tales.

_Azura's Star,_ he realized in something close to awe. _That's Azura's Star..._

But he had no time to contemplate the mystery because then she began to enchant and he had to watch her; he couldn't pass up an opportunity to observe a master enchanter at work.

Talvas had grown quite skilled at learning things by watching; it was a necessity, given Master Neloth's ... unstructured ... approach to teaching him anything. The enchantments she laid on the weapons and armor - _**my**__ weapons and armor,_ he reminded himself, turning the thought over in his mind, trying to grow accustomed to it - were the strongest he had ever seen. She started by enchanting the boots, gauntlets, ring and necklace first to increase the weight he would be able to carry. Talvas was somewhat disappointed but he had to admit he had expected it; after all, she had made it clear one of his duties would be to serve as a pack mule. But then he stared, for he saw she had a skill of which he had heard but had always thought was a myth: the ability to lay two enchantments on one piece of equipment.

And now they started piling up. _Fortify Health. Fortify Conjuration. Fortify Magicka. Fortify Magicka Regen. Resist Magic. Absorb Health. Absorb Stamina. _The list went on and on, all done at breakneck rate, until Talvas was overwhelmed; he could barely understand what he was seeing. When she finally straightened from the enchanter, the new equipment a pile of gently glowing items on the floor, and gestured to him, he couldn't help but ask stupidly, "For _me?_"

"Do you see anyone else around here?" she asked, grinning. "Go ahead, try it on. Show me how it fits."

Talvas carefully gathered the pieces of armor into his hands. They felt light but very strong; they were slightly warm, with the glowing lines of their enchantments shimmering subtly just under the surface. He was almost afraid to touch them. Master Neloth would have shouted at him if he had dared even breathe in the direction of such fine things. Carrying them easily, he retreated to the room she had told him was his own - a whole room, all to himself! Neloth had given him no more than a bedroll on the floor of his laboratory - and arrayed himself in the armor. He struggled a bit with the straps; he had never worn armor before. It fit him like a dream, so light and so well-made he scarcely knew he was wearing it. He could feel the resonance of the enchantments prickling slightly over his skin; then the prickling melded into him, and he could sense their power. A surge of confidence swelled through him. _I could take on a Daedra in this armor,_ he thought.

_Or Neloth?_

He slid the dagger into place at the sheath on his hip and settled the bow and arrows at his back. When he emerged from the room, he saw Ingrid waiting for him.

"How does it look?" he asked, and then held his breath, not entirely convinced she would not say, _What are you doing in that armor? Do you really think I meant anything that fine for __**you**__? Take it off, right now, do you hear? This instant!_

She studied him, frowning slightly, and then paced around him. "Hold still." She pounded him lightly in different places - shoulders, back, chest, stomach; the armor rang like a fine bell under the blows. She straightened the cuirass with a brisk yank, felt along his upper arms, tightened a few straps, then stepped back. Her face broke into a smile.

"Looks pretty good," she said. "How's it feel?"

"I can barely tell I'm wearing it." He flexed his arms, bent at the knees a few times. "I - I don't think I've ever had anything this fine in my life," he admitted. "It's ... beautiful. Thank you."

In actuality such armor was usually exclusively the province of the Altmer, but Talvas didn't mention that; it tickled him, somehow, to think that he was wearing High Elf armor - and more finely made than any set of High Elf armor he had ever seen before.

The Dovahkiin - _no, Ingrid _\- gave a slightly sad smile. "I made Borgakh a set of Daedric armor, but I thought it might be a little heavy for you," she said. "I'm glad you like this."

Borgakh the Steel-Heart had been Ingrid's previous follower, Talvas learned: an Orsimer maiden, from a stronghold known as Mor Khazgur. Talvas had never seen an Orsimer up close, except for Mogrul in Raven Rock, and knew very little about them except for the usual elven stories. When, taking his courage in his hands, Talvas asked how she had died, Ingrid simply shook her head and looked away.

"I'd rather not talk about it." Her face shadowed.

"Oh." Talvas bit his lip, wishing he'd stayed silent. "I'm sorry," he said, searching for the right words.

Ingrid was silent for a moment, firelight flickering over her features. "She was my shield-sister," she said at last. "We shared everything. Danger, triumphs, hardship, treasure. She saved my life so many times I stopped counting, as I did for her. Without her, it feels like my right arm is gone. I scarcely know what I'm doing. I miss her," she finished. "Every day."

And Talvas flushed, feeling, perhaps irrationally, as if he were being instructed, _You have a lot to live up to._

It was a different experience, walking through Raven Rock in his new armor at Ingrid's side. The other citizens of Raven Rock looked at him, treated and spoke to him in a completely different fashion. After a while, he realized what it was: they were not treating him as a miserable lackey, but as someone of stature. There was a new respect in the voices of the town's residents. Captain Veleth greeted him cheerfully, and even Second Councilor Adril Arano nodded to him.

_I am no longer Neloth's poor, put-upon whipping boy, but the Dovahkiin's boon companion,_ he thought to himself, and felt his shoulders straighten. _I am important. I have status. I matter now._ And at such times, he would glance at Ingrid's tall, compelling form, and know that winning the Dovahkiin's favor was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The Dovahkiin was a strange one in some ways; Talvas, who had almost as little experience with humans as he had with Orsimer, was at first unsure how much of this strangeness was due to his unfamiliarity with her kind. However, after coming to know her a little better - and starting at the same time to think he would never know her - he reached the conclusion that much of the strangeness was simply _her._ She could be boisterous: laughing at everything, risking death and danger with a gleam of relish in her eye, drinking and dicing with the various unsavory characters in the Retching Netch and roaring with lively abandon whether she won or lost, joking and flirting with Geldis Sadri as he slid her another flagon of sujamma or flin while Talvas watched with a vague feeling of unease and something that was like but not irritation. _Not exactly._

He would never forget the first time he saw her take on a dragon: the flash of sheer joy in her eyes, the wild power of her - her _thu'um,_ she had told him it was called, as she Shouted the creature down from the sky, the vital abandon with which she had leapt on the creature's head and delivered the final, crushing blow with her mace. She was amazing. Talvas hadn't believed such a creature _could_ be killed, not really. When, panting, he made his way up to her, his useless flame atronach trailing behind him - he had been too far away to engage, and she had taken the creature down entirely by herself - she had brushed right past him and run, laughing, to place herself at the creature's head. He had watched, awestruck, as flames rose from the creature's body and surrounded the Dovahkiin, sinking into her skin and lighting her briefly like a star.

"I'd never seen that before," he confessed, unsure how to voice his thoughts.

She shrugged. "Eh. It happens every time." And as he had been about to ask, _Every time?_ she had looked at him. "Were you scared?"

"Ahhhh ... " Talvas was unable to meet her eyes. He glanced away, scuffing the ground with one of his boots, as his atronach did loops beside him. Ingrid laughed.

"Don't be," she told him. "I've killed so many dragons I've lost count. They're basically flying vermin, not hard if you know what you're doing. Nothing to worry about." She clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. Talvas did not reply, but felt a chill down his spine at the blithe, flippant way she spoke of the mightiest, most ancient creatures in all Tamriel.

Yet despite this energy, there was an almost indefinable, ineffable sadness to her sometimes. A strange shadow lurked in her eyes that he could see if he caught her off-guard; a sort of distant grief that had no name.

She was often pensive, especially in the evenings, sitting by the hearth fire in Raven Rock or the campfire if they were alone in the wild. A far-away look came into her eyes and she would simply gaze into the fire, silent. Talvas would be afraid to approach her then; whenever Neloth would look like that, speaking would be sure to bring the wizard's wrath on his head. So he would sit silently across from her, wanting to speak but not knowing how.

Sometimes she would come out of this mood and share stories of her adventures in Skyrim: tales of blood and thunder, gripping tales of adventure and exploration, or wildly hilarious tales of comic misadventure until Talvas was laughing so hard he could barely hold himself upright. He drank her stories in with fascination; he had never been to the mainland, though he had always wanted to go, and everything she said made it sound strange and wonderful.

"I would love to see it," he said wistfully.

"I'll take you there someday," she said, shrugging.

She had a husband back on the mainland, Talvas learned: a fact that struck him with a strange hot dart of jealousy when he heard it. Perhaps not even jealousy so much as threat: winning the Dovahkiin's favor was the best thing that had ever happened to poor, hapless, ill-fated Talvas, and the thought of having to share his magnificent Dovahkiin with anyone else made him feel helpless, as if he were in danger of losing something precious. Nevertheless the way the Dovahkiin spoke of her husband - an Imperial mage from Cyrodiil, named Marcurio - reassured him a little; she mentioned him with a cool detachment that seemed to belie any strong sentiment. She also had two adopted children, for whom she seemed to hold a distant affection. Talvas worked at the whole mess in his mind as he followed her, trying to find a place for himself in the story of her life.

Nevertheless, he doubted her distant family was the source of the strange sadness in her eyes.

He gained some insight into what it was, the first time he was close enough to help her take on a dragon. The creature sighted them outside the ruins of Fort Frostmoth and at once dove toward them, maw opening, spewing flames. Fear surrounded Talvas like a cloak, but he steeled his spine; summoning his flame atronach, he ran toward Ingrid, who was poised in the open, her bow drawn with an arrow to the string.

"_Ingrid!"_ he shouted as his atronach raced behind him; his hands tingled with Ice Storm and Fireball, ready to release. _"Ingrid! I'm here!"_

The dragon in the sky wheeled, and Ingrid looked toward him. When she saw him, her face blanched white. She swung toward the sky and shouted - no, Shouted; her cry seemed to rend the air itself:

"_**ODAHVIING!**_"

The dragon reared back in the air, wheeling in the direction of the mainland; there, Talvas's sharp eyes made out a speck, distant at first, but increasing rapidly. His blood chilled within him as he saw it was another dragon.

"**Dovahkiin!"** bellowed the other dragon, its voice ringing across the sky. "**Zu'u meyz, Briinah!"**

The first dragon wheeled, and the two fell to blows, tearing and slashing at each other in the sky, gouts of flame and ice ripping across the air. Dragon blood fell like rain. Talvas was stunned; he could have stared at the sight all day long, except the Dovahkiin was running toward him. Her face was white and drawn, and he realized with a shock she was absolutely furious.

"_Talvas!"_ she raged, and he felt himself flinch back. It was all he could do not to cower. "What the _hell_ are you doing?! Get the hell _out_ of here!"

"I - I - " That icy fear was filling him, tangling his tongue, making him stammer; fear not of the dragons, as terrifying as they were, but of _her. _"I was coming to help you, Ingrid, I - "

"I _told _you to _stay back! _I don't _want_ your help, Talvas!" she shouted at him, furious, her face twisted in rage. "_I _will fight the dragon _myself!_ _I'm_ the Dovahkiin, it's_ my job!_ You don't know _what_ the hell you're doing! You'll just get yourself killed! I already lost Borgakh, do you want to be next?!"

She raged at him, shouting on and on, and suddenly, like a flash, an insight burst on him: the Dovahkiin was not angry. Not with him. She was -

_She's afraid. Afraid for me._

The notion rocked him back on his heels; it set the Dovahkiin before him in a new, more human light. The fear vanished and a rush of empathy flowed in to take its place.

"I'm sorry, Ingrid," he said sincerely when she stopped for breath. "I didn't mean to make you worry."

She studied him for a long moment, then at last, nodded. "All right," she said. "Just-remember it for the future, all right?"

In the sky above her the dragons danced; one of the dragons grappled with the other, slashed at it with saber-sharp claws, and the other dragon convulsed in mid-air. It spiraled away from the newcomer, plunged helplessly out of control, and smashed into the ground with an enormous impact, throwing up a huge shower of dust. The stranger dragon dove after it in a controlled movement, settling to the ground in a flurry of wings, hard enough to make Talvas stagger. Ingrid looked back at Talvas. "Well, come on," she said with a grin, her good humor apparently restored. "Don't you want to meet a dragon?"

Talvas was not sure he wanted to meet a dragon, but he couldn't say no to the Dovahkiin; he followed her as she raced to place herself at the head of the slain beast - still marveling at the spectacular display as the soul of the defeated dragon arose from the creature's burning bones to surround and sink into her - and then she gestured Talvas toward the newcomer.

The new dragon had settled some distance away and was watching them, its massive head tilted with one huge bright eye fixed on them. It loomed up against the sky like a mountain; its scales were a dark reddish color, with a row of ferocious spikes bristling down its back. As he drew nearer, the dragon swung its head toward him and snapped its huge jaws sharply; Talvas couldn't help it, he flinched back, then flushed as he heard Ingrid's laughter. A deep rumbling came from the chest of the dragon as well. _Is it laughing too?_ he wondered. _Is it laughing ... at me?_

"Talvas," Ingrid said, "This is Odahviing. He is my _brod zeymah_, my clan brother."

The dragon raised its head far above him, and bent its massive neck, so that its huge head hung above his own. Talvas felt more than a little ridiculous. _What do I say?_ He had never been introduced to a dragon before. His heart was still racing, and the creature's stare didn't help. "Uh - hi?" he volunteered.

One huge eye, larger than a dinner plate, blinked. The creature gave a snort, then swung its head away, dismissing him. Talvas supposed it was an insult, but he couldn't help but feel relieved. The dragon swung back to Ingrid.

"_Zu'u krif _... I fought. _Fah hiin _... For you, _Briinah_," the dragon said, bending its head down to look at her. Ingrid smiled.

"Thank you, my friend. _Zeymah._ I had a ... " She thought for a moment. "A _mal gein_ to look after - " here she gestured toward Talvas, who felt himself flush " - and needed your help."

The dragon - _Odahviing _\- chuckled again, a deep rumbling sound that seemed to shake Talvas's bones. The creature's massive head swung back toward him - the head was _huge,_ longer than Talvas was tall - and it fixed him with one unblinking, enormous eye. Talvas wanted to curl away from that scrutiny but forced himself to stand, unresisting. Odahviing chuckled again.

"_Mal vul fahliil,_" he said in that tremendous, deep voice. "_Rok hind krif _... You have _ahkrin,_ courage. Listen to your _brod monah, _your clan mother, and you will do well." That deep rumbling laugh came again, and Talvas shivered. "But where is your _grah-briinahzin,_ your battle-sister, the _ogiim?_"

Ingrid's face grew dark. "Borgakh is dead," she said shortly. "She died some time ago."

Odahviing bowed his great head for a moment. "Ah. _Krosis,_ _brod-briinah._ She was _faasnu,_ fearless. I trust she died _morokei?_"

The shadow on Ingrid's face darkened further. "I would prefer not to talk about it."

"Ah. I see. _Lot krosis. Fal Krein liiv voth ek divok."_

"It does indeed," Ingrid said quietly. "It does indeed. Thank you once more, for your assistance, old friend."

Odahviing snorted, that deep rumbling once again. "Any time, _brod-briinah._ As I have said," he declared, and there was a rush of wind as he reared back and spread his huge wings, wide enough to block the sun, "If you ever need assistance, you need only call me, and I will come, if I am able. Farewell, _brod-brinaah!"_ he thundered, and leapt upward, the downdraft from the first sweep of those wings almost knocking Talvas off his feet.

As Odahviing rose into the sky, rapidly dwindling into a tiny speck in the distance, Talvas risked a look at Ingrid. She was staring after him, but she did not seem to see him, and her expression was pensive; thoughtful. He might have spoken, but he could not bring himself to interrupt her reverie.

At last, she glanced at him as if recalling something she had forgotten. "Come on," she said, jerking her head back toward the path they had been following. "We should go."

As he trudged after her, Talvas found himself wondering again: _Will I ever know her?_

[*]

It was strange, traveling without Borgakh at her side. Ingrid had had the tall, muscular Orc maiden as her follower for less than a year, but the two of them had fit together so well it seemed they had been that way for their whole lives. Ingrid missed Borgakh's solid presence at her shoulder as they trudged through forests filled with knee-deep snow, or forded rushing rivers, or picked their way through rocky slopes. She missed Borgakh's stolid, reassuring silences, broken only by the occasional dour comment: _"Cave up ahead. Bears if we're lucky; trolls, if we're not,"_ or _"Malacath, witness our deeds." _Sometimes the two of them could go hours without a word exchanged between them, and yet the silence had never felt heavy or awkward; it had seemed simply natural, a silence of shared understanding and outlook, which bound them more than words could have.

Most of all, Ingrid missed going into battle with Borgakh at her side, the two of them fighting as a team, their partnership so instinctive it felt as if they were one mind in two bodies. It had been several months since the Orc maiden had died, yet Ingrid still found it difficult to adjust in combat; it felt almost as if a ghost-Borgakh were at her shoulder, shadowing her, matching her movements. Once or twice, such habits had come close to getting her killed; in the midst of combat she had caught herself starting to call directions to Borgakh before she'd remembered.

_Borgakh, you were my shield-sister. I never knew what it was to have a true shield-sister, before you._

Someday, Ingrid knew, she would have to return to Borgakh's settlement to tell her chief of her death. _He might want blood-price too,_ she mused dolefully. But not now. Ingrid veered away from the thought. It would be too much like acknowledging her shield-sister was truly dead. It was one reason, she admitted on the rare occasions she was honest with herself, why she remained on Solstheim; it was a convenient excuse to escape that duty.

_And besides, well - I never did believe in looking back._

Her new follower, this Talvas Fathryon, was like Borgakh in one way and one way only: his silence. But where Borgakh's silence had been shared, arising jointly from an essential like-ness of mind so deep the two of them had no need to speak, Talvas's silence was entirely his own. Ingrid could tell from the way he looked at her from the corners of those incongruous red eyes, from the way he seemed to fade into the background, from the careful, hesitating way he weighed his words when he did speak, that Talvas was intimidated by her - a fact which both pleased and irritated her.

_Borgakh was never intimidated by anyone or anything._

It had been a long time since she had last fought with a mage at her side, and Ingrid had been interested to see how Talvas would perform. In their first battle, occuring when they had stumbled into a duel between a pyromancer and a cryomancer along the Solstheim coast, she had deliberately held back to see what Talvas would do. He was a conjurer, she saw; he summoned a Flame Atronach and sent it toward the duel with only minor hesitation. Ingrid noticed he kept himself well back from the action, preferring to hurl spells at the combatants or reaching for the bow she had made for him, and she nodded in approval. _Back from the action. Good. That's just where he should be._

When the battle was over and both pyromancer and cryomancer lay dead, Talvas came up to where she stood, her Dragonbone mace dripping with the blood of her foes. Talvas drew a breath and looked carefully at the bodies of the two: one a charred husk, the other, with her skull caved in. His gray complexion paled a bit, but his voice was only a little thin when he asked, "How'd I do?"

"Not bad." Ingrid raised one eyebrow at him. "You all right?"

Talvas nodded. "Yes." He paused. "This is my first battle. I never - I never k-killed anyone before," he admitted in that same careful voice.

Ingrid laughed and clapped him on the back, enjoying the startled look he gave her. "It won't be the last time," she said, and watched as Talvas swallowed; then he glanced at her, his lips compressed, and gave another nod, resolute. "_Now,"_ Ingrid said with relish. "Let's loot!"

That night, across the fire, Talvas sat with his eyes down, refletching some of his arrows. Watching the intense concentration of his sharp, Dunmer features, the sure way his hands moved as he stripped feathers and tied twine, Ingrid let her curiosity get the best of her. "So, what about you, Talvas?" she asked.

He glanced up, startled. "What - what about me?"

"What's your history? Where do you come from? Tell me - how'd you end up here?"

There was a tiny hesitation; then Talvas gave a shrug. "Not much to tell, really," he said a bit too easily. "I was born in Morrowind. My parents were shopkeepers, but my father died before I was born. When my mother passed away, I came here and apprenticed to Master Neloth."

"Ah. Well, that sounds like me," said Ingrid. "My parents had a small farm in Eastmarch; they died when I was young, and I've been on my own ever since. I guess we're the same, you and I," she said, and grinned.

"I guess so," Talvas said noncommittally and offered a careful smile in return. His hesitancy raised some questions in Ingrid's mind, but not enough to pursue. She gave a mental shrug. _If there's anything he wants me to know, he'll tell me when he's ready,_ she thought, and dismissed it.

The two of them had spent the last few days wandering the rocky hills around Tel Mithryn, searching for a heart stone for Master Neloth; the last time she had visited him, when she had taken Talvas with her, Neloth had told Ingrid to bring him one. "He's going to be angry with you for taking so long," Talvas warned her, his ashen Dunmer face drawn.

Ingrid shrugged. "I told him I'd do it when I got around to it." Seeing Talvas's strained expression, Ingrid reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. "He's not my Jarl, Talvas," she chided him.

Talvas bit his lip. He muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "He is mine."

"No he's not," Ingrid said, laughing. "If he has a problem with it he can go and get one himself. Now come on." She tossed the pickaxe down and straightened from the deposit of black stone with red veins, picking up the faceted ashy red crystal she had hewn. "Let's go."

She strode off down the hillside with Talvas trailing behind her, like a dispirited shadow.

They forded the rocky creek that marked the boundaries of Tel Mithryn, Neloth's settlement, to the echoing lorn cries of Revis Sarvani's silt-strider Dusty. A glance to the left showed it looming against the sky, in close connection to the cliff where Revis had made his camp. It wasn't long before they were making their way upward through the mushroom forests around the settlement.

Ingrid brushed a strand of emperor parasol moss aside, where it hung off the gills of one of the mushrooms, and pointed. "There it is. Should be there before too long."

Talvas grunted noncommittally. He followed her as she wound her way toward the looming mushroom tower, flanked by the smaller but still massive towers of the apothecary, the steward's quarters and the kitchens.

Talvas had been sullen and withdrawn all day, and since they had crossed the rocky creek he had been even quieter than usual. As they reached the base of the long ramp up to the main tower, Ingrid glanced over at him and saw that his shoulders were tense, his face pale under the gray ashen color.

_It's the first time we've returned to Tel Mithryn since Talvas left,_ she realized.

"It's going to be all right, Talvas," she chided him gently. "We're only going to see Neloth, not beard a dragon in its den." Talvas said nothing, only bit his lip; his pallor deepened. "How bad can he be?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"You don't know him," Talvas muttered in reply. He shifted from foot to foot. "He'll be angry at me for leaving, I just know it."

Ingrid sighed. "He's not going to be angry at you, Talvas, and if he is, so what?" Talvas did not look reassured; if anything, his long expression grew even longer. "I won't let him blame you, Talvas," she told him. "If he tries, I'll take care of it. Never fear."

The young Dunmer-young, Ingrid knew, but almost certainly older than she-glanced at her sideways, those baleful red eyes wary. "Are you sure?" he asked faintly.

"Positive. Now, lighten up, Talvas - I swear, you can be such a wet blanket sometimes!"

Talvas said nothing. He gave her a sidelong glance, as if saying to himself, _We'll see, _and followed her silently up the steps into the mushroom tower.

[*]

Together they stepped into the dark entry chamber; Ingrid tossed Talvas a wink, which he did not return, and murmured to him, "It's going to be all right." He did not reply. Ingrid leapt into the glowing circle of light on the floor, feeling herself wafted upward toward the top of the tower. A few moments later, her feet jarred on the landing, over a hundred feet above the entrance. Talvas touched down a second after her, clinging close to her side as she stepped out into the ring-shaped top floor. Neloth was nowhere to be seen, but his ill-tempered muttering drifted from the direction of the small alcove where he kept his staff enchanter. The gate to the alcove was up.

"Drovas? _Drovas!_ Man is never around when you need him. _Drovas!"_

Neloth seemed to hear them as they approached, and glanced up briefly from the enchanter. "Drovas, my canis-root tea has gone cold. Bring me another cup immediately, and this time make sure it's strong enough!"

"It's not Drovas," Ingrid called back, somewhat amused.

He turned, startled, and his gaze found them. "Oh, it's you. Well, _you_ bring me a cup of canis-root tea then. And where have you been, anyway? I have an urgent task for you."

"We've been getting _this_ for you, like you asked." Ingrid pulled out the black and red veined heart-stone and handed it to him. Neloth examined it for a moment, then tossed it aside irritably.

"This? I don't care about this anymore." He stopped, his red eyes narrowing suddenly. "Wait. _We?_" That red gaze fell on Talvas, cowering in Ingrid's shadow.

"_Talvas!"_ Neloth bellowed; Talvs whimpered and pressed closer to her. "So _that's_ where you've been! I was wondering where you were the past few days - " Talvas had actually been following Ingrid for over a month, but Ingrid prudently chose not to correct him. "All this time you've been running around with this mercenary! Where did you ever get the idea you could run off like that?! _Well?_ Answer me _this instant!_"

"I - I - " Talvas could only stammer uselessly. "I just - "

"You _told_ him he could go with me," Ingrid interposed easily. "Don't you remember?"

Cut off in mid-rant, Neloth stopped, frowning. Talvas looked bewildered. "What? No he - " he began, before Ingrid stepped on his foot, hard. Fortunately, Neloth didn't seem to hear.

"I did?" His frown deepened as he looked between the two of them. "I suppose I did," he murmured at last. "After all," he added with greater confidence, "having you off running errands for me with the Dovahkiin is better than having you around underfoot all the time. At least when you're with her, you're not ruining any of my experiments. Just make sure you return before the solstice; I'll need to drain a small amount of your blood at that time. Just a quart or so; nothing you can't easily spare." Neloth clapped his hands briskly. "Well. Moving on."

Ingrid didn't spare him a glance, but she could almost feel Talvas sagging with relief beside her. She squeezed his shoulder briefly in reassurance as Neloth continued with characteristic irritation.

" ... but you should have reported in before this. I've needed your assistance for quite some time. You see, I've come to believe - " His expression hardened. "That Tel Mithryn is under attack."

Neloth paused, clearly expecting a dramatic reaction. Ingrid simply folded her arms. "Is that so? And what led you to come to this conclusion?"

The Telvanni wizard scowled impatiently; Ingred felt Talvas tremble. "Oh, come now. _Must_ I draw you a diagram? Too many things have gone wrong recently. Part of my tower has withered. Ash spawn keep appearing, testing my defenses - why, an Ash Guardian even appeared at the entrance to the settlement!" Talvas whimpered and shrank against Ingrid's side; Ingrid did her best to keep a straight face. "We've been attacked by dragons, my experiments have all failed - even my supply of canis root tea has been infested with ash hoppers! Oh, and my steward Varona was murdered," he added, as an afterthought. "Once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is a patter. There _has_ to be someone behind all this misfortune, I tell you!"

"But who would want to attack you?" Ingrid asked, perhaps a bit too innocently; Neloth gave her a hard look.

"You may not believe this, but I have enemies. Too many of them."

_I'll just bet you do,_ Ingrid thought.

"I assumed I had left all my enemies behind me in Morrowind, but it appears that at least one must have followed me here. If I could only figure out _who - "_

He trailed off, seemingly lost in thought, until Ingrid cleared her throat.

"So what do you want _me_ to do about it?" she asked, raising one brow.

Neloth started as if recalled to himself. "I need _you _to find the source of the attacks. Here." He handed her a tarnished silver ring with a red stone. "I've enchanted this ring. Wear it as you search for the culprit, and when you come within one hundred yards, whoever or whatever was behind the attacks will appear to glow to your eyes. I would start around Tel Mithryn; I suspect the source of the attacks is nearby. Let me know what you find."

Ingrid slid the ring onto her finger. "Do you want me to kill them?"

"Not yet. If they have cast a curse, I may need them alive to undo it. Just report back to me, and there will be some gold in it for you."

She raised one brow. "Why don't you do this?"

Neloth looked aghast. "Me? Are you _mad?_ I have important research to conduct! I can't go traipsing all over Solstheim, that's what adventurers like you are for! Now go. And don't lose that ring!"


	2. Chapter 2

No sooner were they out of the tower and safely on the ashy ground around Tel Mithryn when Talvas muttered, "Thank you."

"Don't worry about it." Ingrid turned and looked down at her follower. "Talvas," she chided him, "you have to stand up for yourself every now and again. Neloth wouldn't push you around if you didn't let him."

Talvas's long Dunmer features grew even longer. "It's not so easy," was all he said.

"Sure it is," she chided him. "Just tell him, 'I have a right to go where I please. If you've got a problem with it, too bad.'"

Talvas said nothing; he simply shook his head, pressing his lips together. Ingrid raised one brow.

"Talvas?" she prodded him, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He pulled away from her, lowering his head. A flush had come into his gray cheeks. "Standing up for yourself doesn't work when you're a penniless orphan from the streets of Blacklight."

"I was a penniless orphan from the fields of Eastmarch," Ingrid countered. "You don't _need_ Neloth, Talvas. You stay with him because _for now, _he's useful to you - but that can always change. If it seems like you can get a better deal elsewhere, you'll go there." She put a hand on his shoulder, striving to bring her words through to him. Talvas said nothing, but his features lengthened still more.

"I can't," he said. "Not now. Someday, though - when Neloth makes me his heir - " He fell silent, looking off into the distance. Ingrid studied him for a moment, then shrugged, dismissing the matter.

She held up one gloved hand, turning her attention to the ring on her finger. The slight tingle of magic prickled against her skin.

_He said when I came near the source of the attacks, it would glow. _Ingrid cast her gaze around the settlement - Neloth's huge mushroom tower; the steward's tower to one side with the cook's beyond it; the apothecary's on the other side. Nothing leapt out at her.

"Talvas," she said aloud, turning her attention back to the young Dunmer beside her, "what do you think about what Neloth said?"

"What do you mean?"

"About him being under attack. About him having enemies." Ingrid raised one brow at him "You know the situation at Tel Mithryn better than I do. Does it make sense to you?"

Talvas frowned. "I can't say," he came out with at last. "I really haven't been with Neloth very long, maybe about ten years. I don't know what it was like for him back in Morrowind. Sometimes he talks a little bit about some of the things he said and did back there, but I can't remember anything specific. I'm sorry, Ingrid," he said, looking downcast.

Ingrid shrugged. "Just thought I'd ask. Do you think he actually is under attack?"

"It does seem like a lot of bad things have been happening lately. More than usual even. But it could be just a run of bad luck." His features sharpened in thought; for a moment, he seemed to forget where he was and that he was talking to the Dovahkiin. "Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between normal ill fortune and an exceptionally subtle curse. That's sort of the point of a curse." Ingrid frowned; Talvas's voice had assumed an almost lecturing tone, as he warmed to his subject. "The most effective curses don't make anything happen that wouldn't ordinarily happen in the run of luck; it's just that it all happens at once. The Great Tower withering, ash spawn in the canis-root tea - these are the kinds of things that might ordinarily happen in the normal run of things. But the murder of Varona - that's not just bad luck. That's intent. And the same with the ash spawn. There's a mind directing them. I can feel it. The question is who - "

Abruptly Talvas seemed to become aware Ingrid was staring at him. "What?"

Ingrid laughed. "Nothing, it's just - I think that's the most you've talked since you started following me."

"Oh." Talvas fidgeted and quickly dropped his eyes, flushing, to Ingrid's great enjoyment. "I'm sorry, I - I didn't mean to go on, or - "

"Nothing to apologize for," she said with a grin. "So, Talvas - Let's go look for some enemies!"

[*]

They spent most of the day wandering around the settlement, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Ingrid kept her eye out for anything unusual, but she didn't see anything. Her frustration mounted as the day wore on.

Finally, as the sun stood at midday, she stopped. _That's it. Time to call it quits_.

"All right, Talvas. We've been over every inch of ground in Tel Mithryn five times ad haven't seen anything. That's enough. We're leaving."

"Where are we going?" Talvas asked.

"Raven Rock. Maybe there we can find something. Anyway - " She grimaced. "We've sure run out of places to look around here."

Talvas shifted from foot to foot. "I don't know," he came out with after a moment.

"_What?_" Ingrid turned on him sharply. Talvas immediately took a step backward and she sighed, her frustration mounting though she was careful not to show him. "What, Talvas?" she said, forcing herself to speak more gently.

Talvas shifted his weight again and looked uneasy.

"It's just that," he began carefully, "the ash spawn, and the tower withering - they'd have to come from nearby. I don't think Raven Rock - "

"Do you have a better idea?" She turned her back on him, striding briskly toward the entrance to the settlement, taking some pleasure in the fact that Talvas had to scurry to catch up with her.

"No, but I just - I just think that - "

"Because we've looked all around here and we haven't seen - "

Then she stopped, catching a flicker out of the corner of her eye. _Wait a minute ... _ Because there had been a flash of something purple, hadn't there? On the right side.

Talvas seemed to catch her shift in mood. "What is it?" he asked.

"Shh." She held up one hand and he immediately fell silent. Ingrid turned and looked more closely.

_There it is again ... _To her right, through the thick brown mushroom stems, she saw it: a flash of purple.

"Are you seeing something?" Talvas asked in the background.

Ingrid ignored him. She forged in among the stems, keeping her eye on that steady glow. She was so intent on the flash of purple that she almost missed the drop-off; she caught herself just in time as her toes scraped the edge of a sheer cliff, falling hundreds of feet to sea level below. A shower of pebbles went cascading down the cliff face.

"Ingrid - ?" she heard Talvas call.

"Watch out!" she called to him. "There's a cliff here!" She stood still for a moment, taking in the surroundings.

Carefully she leaned out, looking over the edge of the drop-off. Below her was a narrow strip of land edgeing the cliff face, continually lapped by the sea. _The whale's way,_ she thought, remembering the ancient _kenning._ And far down there, along that strip of land, it came again. The glint of purple.

"Ingrid?" Talvas called again, behind her. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said, turning from the edge. "I think I've found what we're looking for."

[*]

After muttering a quick **"Laas yah nir!"** and determining there was nothing living down there, Ingrid headed down to the beach.Poking around a little, she found a path leading down around the stony basalt cliffs, with ridges jagged and splintered in the shape of hexagonal columns, to open onto a desolate strip of ashy, barren sand alongside the slate-gray sea. Ingrid could smell the salt breeze. Talvas followed behind her, saying nothing, his features set in his habitual expression of unease.

The beach was empty, devoid of life. There were no sounds aside from the quiet swell of the waves and the crunching of their footsteps on the volcanic ash that still spewed ceaselessly from Red Mountain, far off in the distance on the sea-horizon.

At last, Ingrid caught the glint of purple ahead.

"That's it," she said, coming to a halt and raising one hand. Talvas stopped beside her.

"Do you see it?" she asked.

"No, Dovahkiin, I don't see anything." He still looked uneasy. _Can't really blame him,_ she thought as she surveyed the scene before them.

A point of land jutted out into the sea, almost like a finger pointing back to the mainland. The slope of Red Mountain was visible to the right, and to the left, off in the distance, the ruins of an old Dwemer tower. A low, crumbling rock wall about waist high enclosed a rough rectangle of ground, with an opening to landward. Toward seaward, at the point of the promontory, stood an ancient pine tree, its boughs casting a shadow over the rude enclosure. Four obelisks stood guard, one at each corner of the rock wall, surrounded by clumps of purple nightshade.

Inside the stone wall were four sarcophagi, arranged in a diamond pattern. The glow was coming from a sarcophagus to the right.

_It's a graveyard ..._.

"Talvas, did you know this was here?"

Talvas shook his head slowly. "I'd heard there was a cemetery, but I'd never visited it."

There was something chilling about the place: an air of loneliness and despair hanging like an almost visible mist over the small peninsula. The nightshade flowers grouped in sinister, conspiratorial clumps, while the battered tree clung to the stony ground like a man clinging to the side of a cliff. The shadows cast by its spreading branches draped gloom over everything. Ingrid's hand crept instinctively to her dragonbone mace, while the words of a Shout rose to her lips.

She breathed out, calming herself with an act of will.

"That one," she said, pointing toward the glowing grave. "In there."

"Oh." Talvas swallowed nervously. "Do you think it could be - could be a draugr?"

"Don't know," Ingrid said tersely, though what she was thinking was, _Dragon-priest, more likely._ No run-of-the-mill draugr could do the kinds of things Neloth seemed to think this one was doing. "Have you ever fought the undead before?"

"No," Talvas said, his gray Dunmer face paling.

"The trick is to stop thinking of them as 'undead.' It doesn't matter if your opponent is dead or alive, all that matters is they're trying to kill you." She glanced over at him. "You'll do fine."

She'd meant to be reassuring, but Talvas didn't look reassured. He raised his hands, which were already glowing the purple-black of Conjuration, as Ingrid muttered the Aura Whisper Shout one last time.

"Do you see anything?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, but could be the glow from the ring is hiding the aura. Be ready for anything."

She went to kneel by the glowing coffin, then paused to study it it more closely. The sarcophagus was a rough stone box about four feet by six feet, with a carved many-legged centipede running the length of the lid. _Vaermina?_ she wondered, thinking of the Daedric prince. She bent closer to study the lid and saw fine carvings traced into one end. _Letters,_ she realized. _And they spell -_

"Ildari," Talvas said, startling her; she had forgotten he was there. He sounded surprised. Something about the way he said the name caught her attention: _That's an Elven name_. She looked over at him.

"Did you know her?'

"No-o ... " Talvas frowned, then shook his head. "No," he said, more firmly.

_Something there ..._ But Ingrid dismissed it, turning to the problem at hand.

"All right. I'm going to open the sarcophagus. Get ready - there could be anything in there."

Ingrid put her back into it and gave the lid of the coffin a mighty heave. There was a long, grinding sound as it slid over to one side, then toppled into the ash.

With the lid out of the way, Ingrid found herself staring, somewhat anticlimactically, into a vacant stone box. Ash mounded in the corners and against the walls, having sifted in over the years.

"It's empty!" Talvas exclaimed with what sounded like a mix of disappointment and relief.

"Not quite. There's this." Ingrid reached in and pulled out a Staff of Calm, passing it back to Talvas. "And something else - "

She brushed at the ash piled at the north end of the box to reveal the red-streaked black, smoothly faceted surface of a heart-stone. The stone was glowing bright violet, she saw as she cleared it off.

"Here," she said, lifting the stone out of the box. "The glow is coming from here."

"The stone?" Talvas frowned. "What does it mean?"

"Beats me." Ingrid shrugged. "But whatever it is, at least we've got the solution to Neloth's problem now." She straightened, tucking the heartstone away in her armor, then glanced around. "Let's check the rest of the graves quick - see if there's anything good in any of them."

"Wh - you mean like grave robbing?" Talvas stammered.

Ingrid raised one brow at him, enjoying his discomfort. "Sure. After all, whatever's in there, it's not like they're using it. Now come on, help me loot," she said, and proceeded to shove the lid off the next sarcophagus.

[*]

They found nothing but bones and a couple of gold pieces in the other graves, to Ingrid's displeasure; she also did not care for the sidelong looks Talvas kept giving her as they headed away from the cemetery back up to Neloth's tower.

_He's got to toughen up if he wants to be an adventurer,_ she told herself as the mushroom tower came in sight. _There's no harm in a little looting from people dead so long they've gone to bones._

The thought came unbidden that Borgakh would not have given it a second thought - or even a first one - and it did nothing to improve her mood. She was half-tempted to lay into Talvas just because, but the Dunmer wisely said nothing, simply casting dubious sidelong glances in her direction. Ingrid was left to stew in her own annoyance.

_So what it comes down to is: I wasted an afternoon running down this stupid heartstone for Neloth; there wasn't anything in the graves except for a Staff of Calm to make it worthwhile, and now Talvas is acting like an ash hopper crawled up his ass. And I bet that tightwad Neloth doesn't pay me anything either._ All put together, Ingrid was in a foul mood as they stepped inside and ascended the lift to Neloth's living quarters.

Neloth was working at his small enchanter when Ingrid stepped off onto the floor of his living quarters, with Talvas behind her. Unceremoniously, she tossed the heartstone onto the rune-inlaid surface. "Here."

Neloth glanced up from the ring he was enchanting. "What's this?" he demanded irritably. "I didn't ask you for another heartstone."

"It's the source of the attacks against Tel Mithryn.

"Don't be ridiculous. You're interrupting vital work - "

"_Here."_ She pulled off the Ring of Tracking and tossed it at him, restraining an impulse to throw it at his head. He caught it, somewhat startled. _Who does he think he's dealing with here?_ "See for yourself."

Neloth's glowing red eyes narrowed, but he slipped the ring on. Then his whole face sharpened as he scrutinized the heartstone.

"_Fascinating." _ He picked the black-and-red object up and turned it over in his hands, studying it intently. "I've known for years that heartstones had the power to animate the ash of this island, but who would have thought - Where did you find this?" he accused her.

"Found it in a graveyard. The grave was marked 'Ildari.' Does that mean anything to you?"

"Ildari ... Ildari Sarothril!" Neloth snapped his fingers. "Of course! Well, then that explains it. This whole thing is my own fault," he said, beaming as magnanimously as if he were forgiving Ingrid of some wrongdoing.

"Care to explain that?"

"Ildari was my apprentice," Neloth explained. "Some years before Talvas - surely he told you all about this?"

"Nope," Ingrid said, turning to glare at Talvas, who looked flustered.

"She volunteered for one of my experiments with heartstones. It was most annoying when she died." Neloth shook his head in distaste. "Well, at least now we know what's behind this. I'll have to perform a few rituals over the body - "

"You can't. There wasn't one."

_That got his attention._ Neloth stopped and looked at her closely.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Ingrid shrugged. "There wasn't a body in the grave. This heartstone was it. There was nothing else."

"What? _Impossible!"_ Neloth's red eyes snapped.

"Go and look for yourself. What the hell did you _do_ to her, anyway?"

The Telvanni wizard waved one hand dismissively. "Experiments in immortality ... I was hoping to replace my own heart with a heartstone but fortunately, Ildari volunteered. Quite beyond your comprehension, I assure you. But - if she lives - then perhaps the experiment was _not_ a failure after all! Or at least, not a _complete_ failure ... " He frowned. "I must cast a more specific divination."

"My pay?" Ingrid called after him, but Neloth did not so much as glance back. He strode to the center of the living space, next to the balcony around the lift, where he began sketching shapes in the air and muttering to himself.

_Son of a - _ "Talvas," she demanded of the young Dunmer apprentice, "What's he doing?"

"Something he hasn't taught me." She looked at him curiously; there was a startling depth of bitterness in his voice. Talvas frowned, pushing past her to get a better view, studying Neloth with a rapt concentration. "If I had to guess, I'd say he's attempting to summon one of his spirit familiars. He has several, but I can't be - "

"That's great, but what about our _pay,_ Talvas?" Ingrid interrupted him. "You know, the reason we're doing stuff for Neloth in the first place?"

Red eyes glanced at her; Ingrid noted with interest a flash of what looked like ill-concealed irritation, perhaps even anger. It was the first time she had seen this from him. _So he can be pushed too far after all. _Talvas drew a breath; when he spoke, his voice was carefully even. "I wouldn't interrupt him now. It could be dangerous. He might lose control of the spirit he's summoning."

"So?" Ingrid snorted. "I've fought more than a few spirits in my day. They're not that difficult." Her hand dropped to the handle of the mace of Molag Bal, hanging at her belt alongside her dragonbone mace. "If Neloth thinks that he can - "

"Oh, can you _please_ be quiet?" Talvas burst out in anguish, staring intently at Neloth. Then, as if he realized what he had just said -_ and who he had said it to?_ \- he stammered a bit, his face paling. "I'm sorry - I'm sorry, Dovahkiin, I just - "

Ingrid waved one hand benevolently, and Talvas returned to watching Neloth with intense, focused attention. Ingrid found herself fascinated. _Talvas is really serious about learning this magic thing,_ she mused.

Neloth's hands had begun to glow green; in a stentorian voice, the wizard commanded, "I call upon the power of the two moons and the stars! Ildari Sarothril, reveal yourself!" He raised his glowing hands high above his head, then flung the energy he had summoned at the floor. The sphere of light detonated, shaking the mushroom tower and rattling the potion bottles and glassware on the shelves. Ingrid raised one hand to shield her eyes from potential flying debris, hearing Talvas's startled cry beside her. She did not spare him a glance though; her attention was fixed on Neloth.

The Telvanni wizard was on tiptoe, his upper body bent back as if he were being drawn to the ceiling by a hook embedded in his breastbone. His face was working, distorted as if by some alien hand into an agonized grimace. The glow in his red eyes flared, blank and impersonal: the man's consciousness seemed no longer to be looking out behind them; instead they were windows onto emptiness. His throat distended, and then a mighty voice boomed from within his chest: a powerful, superhuman sound, as if some great being were playing Neloth's lungs and vocal cords like an instrument.

The voice boomed: _"She lives. Seek her in Highpoint Tower."_

The light surrounding him blinked out, and Neloth reeled forward. He was panting like a racer, and sweat stood out on his forehead. Ingrid was startled to see Talvas rush to his side.

"Master!" he cried. "Master, are you all right?" But as he reached Neloth, he stumbled, his foot slipping on an errant wine bottle, and he lost his balance, reeling into Neloth and sending him crashing against a nearby table.

"_Talvas, you clumsy oaf!"_ Neloth bellowed, this time in his own shrill tones. Talvas recoiled at once, his face paling.

"I'm sorry, Master, I - "

"Just for that I'm taking _two_ skin samples from you for the grafting experiment - and if you open your mouth again it will be three! Now, since you are mostly incapable of learning, do something _useful:_ go get me that cup of canis root tea I left by the staff enchanter!"

With a gulp, Talvas scurried off, while Ingrid watched with cool interest. Neloth braced himself against the table, drawing several long breaths. He produced a handkerchief from one of his long sleeves, and wiped his forehead. "I had forgotten how strenuous a Master Divination spell can be."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes. A cup of tea and all will be well." Talvas appeared at that moment, holding out a clay cup; Neloth took a long sip from it, then grimaced and spat. He hurled the cup back at Talvas, splashing him with the contents; Talvas cringed and the cup bounced off his shoulder guard, clanging off the Elven armor.

"_This is cold, you imbecile!"_ Neloth thundered. "What do you think you're _doing?"_

"I'm sorry - I'm sorry, Master," Talvas stammered again. "I'm sorry, I'll run right away and get you a fresh cup from the steward - " He ducked his head and scrubbed his dripping face ineffectually with his vambrace.

"Oh, never mind. Stay right there and keep your mouth shut, for heaven's sake; if you can't follow orders, you can at least be silent." His good humor apparently fully restored by berating his apprentice, Neloth straightened, tugging his robes back into place with minor flicks of his fingers. "Well. So Ildari does live after all. And she's in Highpoint Tower. That explains much. You." His gaze fell on Ingrid. "Mercenary."

"The name's _Ingrid,_" she corrected patiently.

"I don't have time to remember the names of humans. You all die so quickly, as soon as I learn one, then that one's gone. You must go to Highpoint Tower and seek Ildari there. Go rip that thrice-cursed heartstone out of her chest."

Ingrid folded her arms, half amused, half annoyed. "And you can't do this because ... ?"

Neloth's face twisted into a scowl. "Can't you remember anything? I already told you, I'm too busy to go traipsing around Skyrim putting down evildoers. If I don't hear back from you after a while, you're probably dead. Maybe I'll send Talvas next." He gestured dismissively in the young Dunmer's direction. "Why are you still standing there? I told you to go!"

"_Because,"_ Ingrid said, still patient, "I'm not your lackey, that's why. If you want me to do something," she said, laying it out for him as if he were a child, in small sentences, "You are going to have to pay."

Neloth snorted in disgust. "You mercenaries - "

"_Adventurers._"

"Why is everything always about money with your type?"

"Because. If you're good at something, never do it for free," Ingrid retorted snappily.

"All _right,_ all _right,"_ Neloth grumbled. "I'll find something of worth to compensate you. Now will you take the job and go, or not?"

Ingrid waited just long enough to see Neloth's scowl deepen, then grinned. "This is your lucky day; I'm not doing anything else, so I might as well help you out."

"Very amusing," Neloth snorted. "Now go. You're distracting me from vital experiments. I can't spend all day chattering with you, after all; I've too much to do."

As Ingrid headed for the lift with Talvas at her heels, Neloth called after her, "Be sure to bring back an amusing story about how Ildari died!"

"I'll see what I can do," Ingrid replied, and leapt into the column of light.

[*]

As they stepped out into the dim light of the overcast sky onto the ramp leading to the ground, Ingrid noticed Talvas was still trying to squeeze canis-root tea from the ends of his dripping, longish hair. She pulled a cloth from within her armor and handed it to him.

"Here."

"Thank you," he said colorlessly. He took the cloth and applied it to his hair and face in silence.

"You okay?"

"Yes. The - the armor you made for me protected me." Talvas continued to clean himself for a moment, then burst out unhappily, "That's how he's _always_ been. Ever since he's first taken me on as an apprentice." His voice cracked. "I can never do anything right for him, he's always treated me like this - "

"Because you _let_ him, Talvas," Ingrid chided, leaning against a railing. "He treats you like that because he knows you're intimidated by him. If you pushed back, stood up to him - "

He jerked away from her. "I _told_ you," he said, "Standing for yourself doesn't work when - "

"When you're a penniless orphan from the streets of Blacklight, yes, I remember," Ingrid replied indulgently. "How's _not_ standing up for yourself working out for you so far?"

His face grew sullen. "You just don't understand anything." Then he glanced at her apprehensively. Ingrid simply gave a magnanimous wave.

"Well, maybe you're right, Talvas," she said with a shrug. "What do you know about Ildari Sarothril?"

"About ... Ildari?" Talvas blinked, confused by the change in topic. He wet his lips. "Not very much, I'm afraid. I know she was Master Neloth's old apprentice, and that he took me on after she died twenty years ago. There were some things ... rumors, really. Things about her death. Some of them were ... pretty gruesome." He swallowed a bit. "I didn't pay much attention, though."

Yet the way he was shifting from foot to foot, the way his hands twisted the cloth she had given him, belied his words. _Didn't pay much attention, or __**tried**__ not to pay attention?_ Ingrid mused, taking note of the fact that however gruesome the rumors had been, they apparently had not been gruesome enough to dissuade Talvas from joining Neloth.

Talvas blinked again, as if unnerved by her focused stare. "I'm sorry, Dovahkiin. I should have said something when we found the grave, but I didn't make the connection. No one's mentioned her in years. She - she wasn't well-liked by the other residents if that helps. I know Elynea always said - "

"Don't worry, Talvas, that's good enough," Ingrid assured him. She glanced at the gloomy, overcast sky. "Let's get going. If we start now, we should be halfway to Highpoint Tower by dark."


	3. Chapter 3

As soon as they crossed the rocky creek, Talvas felt his heart lighten, the way it always did when he was permitted by Neloth to leave Tel Mithryn. It was as if a burden had been lifted; his step lightened as he followed Ingrid, and though they were heading out on another dangerous misson, he felt no fear, only an overpowering sense of relief.

_Free. With Ingrid, away from Tel Mithryn, I am free,_ he thought. And his eyes went to the tall, straight form of the Dovahkiin, striding ahead with an almost jaunty step, clearly ready for action.

They moved along the ash plain for an hour or so and then headed upward, through a sparse pine forest. Ingrid would stop every now and then to cast Clairvoyance, to assure they were going in the right direction. The glowing blue line led them north-northwest, as the ashy slope grew steeper. The clouded sky overhead dimmed, as the sun sank toward the horizon.

Ingrid was quiet, scanning her surroundings in a manner both alert and unconcerned; occasionally she whistled a bit of a tune, taking her dragonbone mace from her belt and swinging it to keep time.

"What is that song?" Talvas asked her once.

"'Ragnar the Red,'" Ingrid said, grinning. "It's really popular back on the mainland - all the bards know it and it's sung in every tavern. At Heljarchen, it's one of my bard Oriella's favorite songs."

Talvas knew that Ingrid had been granted the right to own property in all of Skyrim's holds, and had even constructed three of her own steddings, but this was the first he'd heard she had bards in her employ. He was silent. Instead, as they forged upward throughout the afternoon and evening, as they began to catch sight of stony bluffs rearing up against the sky, Talvas found himself turning over in his mind what she had said outside Tel Mithryn.

_You have to stand up for yourself, Talva_s.

The careless, carefree way she had said that wounded him, somehow. _It's not that easy. Damn it, it just __**isn't**__._ Talvas had tried standing up for himself before - with Neloth, with leaders of the street gangs in Blacklight, with the city guard. It had never worked, not even once, and usually just made things worse.

"_I was a penniless orphan from the fields of Eastmarch." Yes, and you're also the Dovahkiin. _Talvas brooded as the sky darkened above them and they forged onward. _But someday, someday when Neloth makes me his heir - when __**I **__inherit his power - _

He knew that by the time Neloth did so, Ingrid might very well be old or dead, but he pushed the thought away; it was pleasant to think about Ingrid seeing him at last as an awe-inspiring Telvanni wizard, her equal (_superior?_) in the fullness of his power - with Neloth safely out of the picture, of course. More pleasant certainly than thinking about the present. He mused on that, his thoughts skirting the edges of half-realized, half-formed scenarios, as they slowly emerged from the pine forest to the base of the stark bluffs.

He was so lost in thought that it took him a moment to realize Ingrid had stopped; he almost bumped into her by accident.

"Ingrid?"

"We'll stop here for the night," Ingrid said, glancing over her shoulder. "See that hollow in the rock wall? It's shielded and will make a good camp spot." She glanced up at the bluffs looming overhead, raised her hand and cast Clairvoyance again. "Take the first watch. I feel - " A slight line marred the skin between her featherstroke brows, as they contracted over her blue eyes; then she gave a shake of her head. "Never mind. Wake me at second moonrise - if you can even tell when it is under these clouds." She scowled up at the ash clouds overhead in disgust.

"All right." Talvas nodded obediently.

They shared a cold dinner of bread, cheese and mead - which Talvas wasn't fond of but had learned to tolerate because Ingrid liked it - and then Ingrid bedded down. She had been silent and somewhat withdrawn throughout the meal, that frown appearing on her face at odd moments. Talvas eventually summoned the courage to ask her, "Are you all right?"

She started to say something, stopped, then shook her head again. "Just a little tired, I guess. I'll be all right after some sleep. Don't forget to wake me."

"I will," Talvas replied, although silently determining that he would let her sleep through the night. He had read somewhere that mer needed less sleep than men, and if Ingrid was so tired, the least he could do was let her sleep. He could imagine her surprise when she woke the next morning - _"Talvas! Did you really watch all through the night yourself?"_

"_Of course," he would reply, shrugging it off as if it were no big deal. "I could tell - " and here he would look at her with that species of wry amusement she so often directed toward him. "I could tell you needed it." _

_Her face broke into a smile of real warmth. "Well - thank you, Talvas. I don't know what I would do without you. You're a better companion than Marcurio or Borgakh ever was ... "_

Talvas summoned his Flame Atronach as Ingrid lay down across from him and closed her eyes - it was his habit, for the atronach could detect enemies at farther distances than he could and would also see things he could not. He sat, gazing into the bed of coals that had been their campfire, and his thoughts turned again toward that time when he would inherit Neloth's power, and would be able to face Ingrid and the world as full Telvanni wizard ...

Then he frowned slightly. _What if Ildari thought the same thing?_

Somehow the night seemed colder, the sky darker; Talvas drew his Flame Atronach nearer for the warmth it gave. He bit his lip, staring broodingly into the fire.

_Ildari ..._

Talvas knew very little about Ildari; few in Tel Mithryn had ever spoken of her, and what little he'd heard had seemed to indicate, as he'd told Ingrid, that she was not well-liked. Elynea had maintained on the few occasions she'd spoken of her that Ildari had gotten "just what she deserved, nothing more, nothing less." Reading between the lines, Talvas had gleaned that Ildari had been headstrong and arrogant, constantly pushing Neloth to teach her more and more. _Also,_ he thought gloomily, _that Neloth liked that quality about her._ Yet it had been that quality that seemed to have led to her death.

_In one of Neloth's "experiments."_ Talvas couldn't suppress a shudder. The mere fact that she'd volunteered for one of Neloth's experiments went a fair way, in Talvas's mind, to proving everything he'd heard about her was correct. _No way in all of Tamriel I'd ever volunteer to let Neloth experiment on me, _Talvas mused ... and squashed the little voice that wondered, in some part of his mind, just how true that was.

_She volunteered,_ he repeated to himself. _For whatever Neloth's experiment was, she volunteered. I'm safe. He would never do that to me ..._

The Flame Atronach looped uneasily beside him, catching his mood; Talvas gave himself a mental shake, refocusing his thoughts to control it. _He would never do that to me,_ he told himself again, firmly, willing himself to believe it. _Anyway the Dovahkiin would protect me. I'm her companion. She values me. _His fingers curved around the hilt of the small dagger she had made for him, feeling its enchantments merge with himself. _She wouldn't let Neloth hurt me ..._

His eyes focused on Ingrid. The Dovahkiin's sleep was restless; he could see a faint line between her brows, above her closed eyes, and she was tossing and turning. She was muttering in her sleep; Talvas could make out words that sounded like, "No," and "Mother, I can't." He wondered what she was dreaming of.

_She is an orphan too. Like me,_ he reflected. He remembered his own mother, standing by her bedside as she coughed and twisted in the final throes of the sickness that had claimed her, his terror, grief and despair at her passing. She had been his entire world, the source of all good things that flowed to the young Dunmer lad he had been; losing her so young, he'd had literally no idea how he was going to survive without her. Some days, he _still_ didn't know how he'd managed it; much of the time period after she'd died was vague and indistinct in his mind. He wondered how Ingrid's parents had died ... what _she_ had done to survive.

_Whatever it was,_ he mused darkly, _it seemed to have worked for her better than for me._

Ingrid's tossing and turning was becoming more violent; a spike of concern brushed his heart, and Talvas wondered, biting his lip, if he should wake her. She muttered again, sounds that he could not make out. Just as he was about to rise and go to her, she came awake with a start, her eyes snapping open, and she gasped out, _"Borgakh!"_

Talvas swallowed. "Ingrid, it's me. Talvas. I'm right here - "

Her eyes were wandering and vague with confusion; they found him, and slowly an awareness of where she was seemed to come back to her. "Talvas," she murmured, settling back down again and raising one hand to her head. "Right. Talvas."

Her face was pale, tendrils of her blonde hair hanging over her features; there were dark circles under her eyes and in the light from his Flame Atronach, sweat glistened on her skin. She had propped herself on one arm, her head bowed, rubbing at her temples. Talvas drew a careful breath.

"Ingrid, are you - are you all right?"

"Fine. Just a bad dream." She waved his question away with one hand, still rubbing at her temples. Seeing her like that hurt him, twisted into his heart. He hadn't known she even _could _look so vulnerable. _Ingrid ... _

He swallowed hard, daring to push further.

"Are - are you sure? If - that is, if you want to talk about it - " He chewed at his lip. "I - I heard you mention your mother - "

Her eyes jerked up to meet his, and she paled - something like fear crossed her features. "No!" She almost seemed to physically recoil, and Talvas drew in his breath; then she took hold of herself. "No. I'm fine," she said, calmer. "I'm fine. Here." She sat up, taking a grip on her mace; she raised her other hand, and conjured, her favorite familiar: a glimmering, ghostly wolf-shape. Talvas knew Ingrid had the ability to summon far, far stronger familiars, a dremora lord among them, but the simple wolf seemed to be her favorite. The wolf came to her and sniffed her hand, licking at her gently. "I'll watch now. Go to sleep, Talvas; I'll wake you in the morning."

"But Ingrid - "

"I said, _go to sleep._"

"All right," he acquiesced. But as he dismissed his Flame Atronach and laid down in his own sleeping roll, he found himself wondering how Ingrid's mother had died that she still could not bring herself to speak of it.

[*]

The thought was still in his mind the next morning, when he opened his eyes to the sun streaming in and Ingrid dousing the campfire.

"You're awake. Here." She tossed him another chunk of bread and piece of cheese. "Breakfast. Hurry and eat, though, I want to get moving as soon as possible."

Talvas sat up, shaking the last of the sleep away, rubbing at his eyes. Slowly, he nibbled at the bread and cheese, swallowing it with gulps of more of that Nord mead that Ingrid liked. Ingrid was busying herself about the encampment, burying the remains of the fire in the ashy soil along with the scraps of last night's meal, examining her weapons and armor carefully - he noticed she pulled out several soul gems to refill both her dragonbone mace and that ugly, glowing green mace she carried with her. He had heard her call it the Mace of Molag Bal, but thought she must have been joking, as she did so often.

Talvas studied Ingrid, thinking of her restless sleep the night before, the look on her face. _It was fright that I saw then, I'm sure of it._ Yet no trace of that fright showed now; she seemed upbeat, full of her usual determination and energy, decisive and ready to move on. Her wolf frisked about her, ready to play, until Ingrid waved her hand and dismissed it.

"Come on, Talvas," she chided, seeing him sitting idle. "We need to get going."

"Of course," Talvas hurried to respond, wincing a little out of sheer habit; Neloth would have shouted at him and berated him. He hastened to his feet and began to roll his own bedroll, quickly siting his own weapons about himself. Still, his gaze kept straying toward Ingrid. _What could possibly have happened to make her look like that? Was it - _

"Why are you staring at me?" Ingrid interrupted his thoughts. "See something you like?"

"I - " Talvas swallowed, feeling himself flush and not knowing how to answer. "I'm sorry, Ingrid, I didn't mean to - "

She laughed. "I'm just giving you a hard time. Ready to move out?"

"Yes," Talvas replied quietly.

"Then let's go."

[*]

Talvas brooded on the matter over the course of the day, as they circumnavigated the base of the bluffs, making their way over the ashy ground and through the light stands of sickly, dead or dying pine trees - even ash pines could not long endure the toxic material spewed from Red Mountain. The crumbling top of Highpoint Tower appeared and disappeared at irregular intervals over the edge of the bluffs, standing out against the colorless sky like the dark silhouette of a sentinel.

_It's watching,_ Talvas thought.

If Ingrid felt Talvas's dark sense of foreboding, she did not show it. She forged ahead with her customary indomitable stride. Her jaunty air contrasted sharply with the stark fear Talvas remembered: her pale face with wide and frightened eyes hung in his mind as if it had been etched there. He could not reconcile that fear with what he knew about her.

His mind turned again toward her parents. _What happened to make her so afraid?_ The thought of his wonderful, magnificent Dovahkiin being _frightened_ like that filled him with a strange sensation: an almost overwhelming surge of protectiveness.

_I understand. I know how she feels, better certainly than her other companions - she even said, she and I were the same. Maybe ... maybe ..._

He thought of that - of the pain she must be in, of the tremendous effort it must take to hide that pain beneath her flippant, boisterous demeanor - as he followed her throughout the morning. _If she turned to me ... I could help her. I could talk to her, soothe her, calm her fears ..._ His mind spun little dreams of himself and her as they followed the base of the bluffs, until with the sun half-way up the sky, Ingrid called a brief halt.

She cast Clairvoyance, then dropped the spell. "There." And she nodded to a set of rounded stone stairs that led to a tunnel carved in the rock. "We'll take a quick break here before we head in."

"Of course, Dovahkiin." They sat down to smoked salmon, washed down with more mead. Ingrid was thoughtful and reserved, glancing toward the tunnel. Talvas tried to summon his courage. At last, drawing a breath, he said, "Ingrid?"

"Yeah, Talvas?" she asked absently, brushing crumbs from her lap.

"If I may ... " He seized his courage. "How did your parents die?"

She swung on him, her brows rushing together into a frown, and a chill swept him as he realized at once he had gone too far. "_What?_ Why would you even _ask_ that?"

"I'm sorry - I'm sorry, Dovahkiin - " Talvas scrambled to apologize. "I'm sorry - I didn't mean to intrude, I just - last night, you mentioned your mother and - "

"My _mother?_" Ingrid stared at him, and for a moment Talvas was sure she was going to strike him; he cringed. She drew a breath, controlling herself with a visible effort. "All of that was a long time ago, do you hear me?" Then, gentler, she added, "I don't believe in looking back, Talvas. There's no point to it. You can't change the past, and all it does is drag you down. Anyway," she said, and stood up abruptly, "come on. We've wasted enough time here, let's get going."

Talvas swallowed hard. "Of course, Dovahkiin." The chill inside him deepened to a horrendous sense of guilt, shame and self-consciousness; he hung his head, thinking miserably that he had tried to pry and Ingrid had rightfully slapped him down. _What must she think of me now?_ "I'm sorry, Dovahkiin," he said again, feeling his face burning.

Ingrid glanced at him, over her shoulder. "Eh. Never mind. It's forgotten. Now come on - let's go raid this dungeon."

[*]

The tunnel led to a wooden door that opened into a large round room, dimly lit by sunlight filtering in from a roof collapse. The center of the room was dominated by a large pillar; there were stairs leading down cut into the floor. The ever-present ash had filtered into the room and Talvas could smell dust, rot and decay.

_So this is where Ildari has run to ground._ He shivered, thinking soon he could be face to face with the apprentice Neloth had taken before him.

Ingrid cast a Candlelight spell; Talvas quickly followed suit, and the harsh rays of the glowing balls of light over their heads threw their surroundings into stark relief. He heard her muttering the Aura Whisper shout.

"Nobody nearby," she reported. "Still, be careful. Down these stairs." She gestured. "Let me go first, but stay close."

The worn spiral stairs stopped one flight down on a small landing. The landing held two chairs, an iron fire bowl holding charred sticks, and a couple of cast-iron pots, along with a bottle or two of mead. "Someone's been doing some cooking here, not too long ago," Ingrid observed.

"Ildari?" Talvas asked.

"Well, it certainly wasn't the ash spawn. Let's keep moving."

They followed the winding, hollowed stairs down another flight, until they reached another small, wedge-shaped landing. This landing held a weathered wooden table with a chair carelessly askew in front of it. A lantern hung above the table. By the light of their candlelight spells, Talvas saw the table top held a quill, inkwell, a couple rolls of paper, and a red-covered journal.

Ingrid picked up the journal without comment and riffled the pages. She scanned each one briefly, then stopped. She began to read at greater length. Something about the set of her expression caught Talvas's attention.

"What is it?" he asked.

She turned to him, her face somber. "Here, Talvas," she said, and handed him the red journal. "I think you should read this."

Talvas took the journal from her and opened it to the pages she indicated. They were the last in the book. He read:

_The fools have taken me in. Weak, pathetic men intent on looting this ancient fortress with their crude mining. Niyya is pleasant enough. I may choose to spare her when the time comes. _

_I'm still weak from Neloth's betrayal. He promised me power and glory. He failed to mention the constant pain. And the voices. By the Three, I would do anything not to hear the voices._

_When my strength returns, I will have my vengeance on my former master. I can feel the power of the heart-stone, beating inside me. I need to find a way to tap into its power. Then he shall pay. In blood, and fire, and ash._

The words were Ildari's; they could have been no other. Talvas felt a chill descend on him. He read the whole thing through three times, feeling Ingrid's eyes on him like weight, trying to make sense of it. His eyes kept returning to the words "Neloth" and "betrayal" and "pain."

_This was Ildari's fate. This was the fate of Neloth's apprentice before me. _He tried to push the thought away, but the words on the page haunted him.

Suddenly, Talvas didn't want to be holding the book anymore. His first impulse was to throw the small volume away from him, but he controlled it; his eyes lifted from the spidery, unsteady handwriting to Ingrid. She was watching him, her face long and solemn.

"Here," he said, and almost shoved the book at her. His nerves were on edge; he waited anxiously to hear if she would say anything to him about the contents of the journal, but she simply took it from him and stowed it within her armor without a word. Talvas had to admit he was relieved to see the small red volume pass out of sight.

Ingrid jerked her head at the stairway, though she did not lose the somber look on her face. "Come on."

The staircase landed in a storage area, with barrels, crates and boxes piled around a table against the back wall. More ash covered the floor and was heaped in the corners of the room. An opening in the west wall led to a wide, arched stone passage. Light came from the arched opening, and Talvas looked closer to see lit torches spaced down the walls.

"Wait up a bit," Ingrid muttered, and whispered her "**Laas yah nir!**" shout again. She glanced back at him. "Something up ahead. Careful."

The passage opened in a large, round room with three exits that housed several albino spiders. In contrast to the corridor they had just come down, this room appeared to have been hewn out of the rock underlying the castle; however, its floor was paved with crumbling stone. Ingrid dispatched the albino spiders quickly and then stepped down to the floor of the room.

"Which one?" Talvas asked, looking at the three exits, visible through the heavy spider webs and egg pods.

Ingrid raised her hand and cast Clairvoyance.

"That one." She pointed toward the largest of the three openings, one that led to a wide corridor. Her eyes narrowed. "Hang on - there's a soul-stone trap at the entrance. I'll disarm it."

Talvas waited as Ingrid cast a ward spell, then advanced on the trap. He saw lightning flash out from the soul-stone trap to the left of the door and strike Ingrid's glowing ward; then she lashed out with her mace and knocked the stone from its perch. She gestured behind her for Talvas to come up as she bent to pick up the stone.

"Do you think Ildari knew we were coming?" Talvas ventured. "And she set this up for us?"

Ingrid shrugged. "Don't know," she said absently. "Stay close."

The corridor went on for some distance, twisting and turning every so often. _Seems like there used to be a whole complex here,_ Talvas thought as he followed Ingrid through the passage, _not just the tower._ Perhaps the old tower was the only visible part of a remaining fortress which had been buried when Red Mountain erupted.

They followed the passage until they came to another soul-stone trap, positioned right before a door set into the left-hand wall. Ingrid disarmed this one too and opened the door; looking over her shoulder, Talvas discerned it led to a round room furnished with a few shelves and a scaffolding in the center that appeared to be holding up the ceiling. Across from the entrance, part of the wall had collapsed to open into a small stone grotto, with shafts of sunlight streaming in from a break in the top.

"It's clear," Ingrid pronounced after a quick scan of the room. She backed out. Talvas followed, musing on the scaffolding. _Someone built that - __**after**__ the tower fell to ruin._ There would be no need to build such a scaffolding unless the tower was already falling apart. Furthermore, he thought, it would take a considerable amount of labor to build such a scaffolding. _At some point, then, this complex of ruins was occupied by someone - and fairly recently too. So what happened to all the people?_

He was so lost in his musings he almost bumped into Ingrid, who had come to an abrupt stop. "What is it?" he asked her, catching himself on a wall.

"Large room up ahead. Hold on." She whispered a quick **"Laas yah nir!"** and then nodded. "It's empty. But hold on - there's a lightning trap on the floor."

"She _did_ know we were coming," Talvas whispered, feeling cold dread curling in his stomach.

"Not necessarily," Ingrid shrugged. "This could be just part of her defenses. Still - " she looked back at him "- that's some good thinking. Never pays to underestimate your opponent. Let's keep it in mind."

_Good thinking._ Despite the circumstances, Talvas felt a flush of warmth suffuse him. Neloth had never praised him at all that he could remember, and hearing it from Ingrid made him feel briefly as if he were walking on air.

"How are we going to get past the lightning trap?" he asked her after a moment. If she had been Neloth, Talvas suspected she would have ordered him to walk into the middle of the room to set it off by himself - and at that moment, if Ingrid had asked him to do so, he would have done it willingly, for her.

But the Dovahkiin had something different in mind. She grinned and raised a hand, glowing with the black-purple of conjuration. "That's what summon spells are for."

"Oh." Talvas was silent, watching, as Ingrid cast her Conjuration spell.

Right in the center of the room, at the lightning trap, the black and violet sphere of her Conjuration spell unfolded, clearing away to reveal the form of her Dremora Lord - a Valynaz in rank, Talvas thought. The Dremora Lord, clad in black and red Daedric Armor with a Daedric Greatsword at its back, reeled and staggered as the lightning trap went off with a burst of bolts in all directions. As the lightning trap exploded, there was a rumbling, and a shower of rocks cascaded into the room from the ceiling. The Dremora Lord grunted again as one or two of the rocks rumbled into him, bouncing off his armor.

Talvas looked sideways uneasily at Ingrid. He knew summoned creatures were different from ordinary creatures, and that if they received "lethal" damage it wouldn't kill them, just send them back to the realm from whence they had been summoned. Still, Ingrid's willingness to treat her Dremora Lord in this way troubled him.

Ingrid, however, did not seem to notice his discomfort. She called to the Dremora Lord, "All clear in there?"

The lord turned its black and red face, surmounted by horns, in her direction. "_All is clear, my mistress,"_ it rumbled in its grating, inhuman voice. _"The damage was but a scratch."_ It contemptuously brushed some dust from its armor.

"Great." She glanced at Talvas. "Come on. Stay close."

Talvas followed her into the large round room, staying close by her. He was unsure how to react to Ingrid's Dremora Lord, and always felt uneasy and out of place around it. He could almost feel it giving him a disdainful glance from its glittering black eyes. The Dremora had no name; he knew from reading that Dremora did not have the concept of personal names. Even "Valynaz" was a rank or a title, not a name. The Dremora said nothing to either of them, but fell into step behind Ingrid as she moved into the room, looking around.

The room was large and circular, stretching up to a height of two stories; a wooden foot bridge crossed it halfway up the wall. Talvas shuddered to see two blood-stained torture racks in the room, one next to a kettle of hot coals with a glowing poker placed in the fire and a blood-stained butcher's block nearby.

"She was using this recently," he murmured, only half aware of it.

"Apparently," Ingrid replied coolly. She wandered across the room to investigate the other rack, placed near a grand enchanter. "Hmmm. Wonder if she was filling soul gems here," she mused.

She gestured to Talvas and her Dremora Lord and headed toward the alternate exit from the room, across from where they had come in.

This exit led to a broad stone corridor. The corridor was empty except for a few barrels piled along the walls here and there, with lit candles at intervals down the hall. Ingrid led the way down it, with the Dremora and Talvas following, until she stopped at the top of a short flight of steps.

"What is it?" Talvas asked, coming up beside her.

"Another lightning rune trap," Ingrid said, and now that she had mentioned it, Talvas could see it. The glowing white purple lines of the trap sat on the wall at head height, at the middle of a t-intersection down the stairs directly in front of them.

Ingrid glanced over her shoulder at the Dremora following them. "You know what to do," she told it with a sort of brutal cheerfulness. "Go trigger that thing."

The Dremora snorted dismissively. _"As you command, mistress,"_ it rumbled in that grating voice. Talvas knotted his fists together as the dark figure sauntered down the stairs and touched the rune. Lightning flashed out from the thin lines on the wall, strobing over the Dremora, who gave a grunt of pain; a cloud of dark smoke arose around it and Talvas heard the _pop_ of the Dremora Lord flickering out of existence. Apparently the damage had been enough to send it back to Oblivion. Ingrid glanced at Talvas and grinned.

"Told you that's what summon spells are for," she said.

Talvas shifted uneasily. "Don't - don't you ever worry that maybe one day your Dremora might turn on you?"

"Nope," Ingrid said blithely. "The Conjuration spell ensures that the Dremora can't do anything other than my will. So it can't attack me, no matter how much it would like to. And if it does, so what? I've killed _plenty_ of Dremora Lords before," she scoffed. "They're much easier than dragons. If it turns on me, I'll just kill this one too." She shrugged. "That's how I got all the Daedra Hearts to make Borgakh her set of Daedric Armor," she added after a moment, a more contemplative expression stealing over her face.

Talvas bit his lip, still uneasy. He might have said more, but both of them heard a shout echoing down the corridor from the right.

"_By the Nine, is anyone out there? Help me! Nine Gods, help me!"_

Ingrid wheeled at once, and Talvas turned as well, electrified. "It came from that way," he said.

"Right you are." Ingrid drew her mace, all carelessness fallen away from her. Together the two of them proceeded down the hallway. Talvas could see a light at the end of it. His heart was racing. _Who is it? Not Ildari ... one of her captives? Could it be a trick?_

In a rush, the two of them surged through the doorframe.

The room beyond was a small room with three barred cells inset into the walls. A round table dominated the center of the room, with a fire bowl beyond. The bowl held the remains of a fire. Two cells held piles of bones, and a skeleton lay next to the fire bowl.

"Oh, thank the Nine! You came! You actually came!"

The cell on the right held a dark-skinned Redguard woman with long blonde hair, dressed in rags. Her face was gaunt with suffering; she clung to the bars as if she could barely stand. Her body, where it was visible under the rags, was criss-crossed with gaping wounds and scars, and she was babbling almost helplessly.

"Thank the Nine. I thought no one would come. I thought no one heard - "

Ingrid stepped forward, her aura of calm almost visibly soothing the other woman. "Easy now," she said. "What's your name?"

"Niyya. I'm Niyya. Gods above, I thought I was going to die here - "

The way she was rambling on raised the hair on the back of Talvas's neck. The whole dungeon room chilled him. Blood and other offal was smeared on the walls. The place reeked of death. The recesses of the Redguard woman's cell were dim and unilluminated, but in the shadows, Talvas could just barely make out what looked like another skeleton, along with a blackish-red mass that seemed to be a lump of flesh - but he quickly averted his eyes, swallowing hard. His gorge was rising in his throat.

"Who did this to you?" he blurted out, appalled.

"Ildari," Niyya said, and her voice turned ice cold. "She killed all of us. I'm the last. She was _saving_ me. I thought I was going to die - I _had_ to - after everything I saw her do to the others, the blood, the knives, the fire - she took the knives and - "

"Talvas," Ingrid said swiftly, "go down the hall and keep watch at the intersection. Make sure no one is sneaking up on us."

Talvas swallowed. "Of course, Dovahkiin." He hastened out of the cell, turning his back to Ingrid and Niyya, hurrying back into the dim, cool passageway. He had no need to guard, of course; a familiar could do the job as well as he. The real reason was obviously that Ingrid didn't want him to hear what Niyya had to say. _The details of all Ildari did,_ he thought, and shuddered. Perhaps he ought to feel insulted - but as he recalled Niyya's gaunt and wasted frame, the horrid shapes lurking in the shadows behind her, he couldn't find it within himself to be anything but grateful.

He wrapped his arms around himself, staring resolutely into the darkness with his back to the cell. He could hear Ingrid's and Niyya's voices rising and falling behind him, and though he couldn't make out any words, the impassioned despair in Niyya's voice sent chills down his spine. From time to time Ingrid would speak, her own voice calm and steady. Once Niyya raised her voice in a desperate cry: "I _had_ to! I _had _to! It was all I - " and then Ingrid's calm, soothing reply. Talvas shivered. He didn't want to know what Niyya had had to do to survive; dark horrors thronged his mind.

_What happened to Ildari to make her so cruel?_ he wondered, and on the heels of that, buried so deep he scarcely acknowledged it, _What did Neloth do to her to make her so cruel?_

That was a thought he did not want to think; Talvas shifted from foot to foot. _It doesn't matter. I'm with the Dovahkiin now. With Ingrid. _

At last the voices died down and he heard footsteps coming in his direction. Before too long, Ingrid and Niyya had joined him, Niyya looking considerably steadier; Talvas suspected Ingrid had used some healing magic on her.

" - but get out of here as fast as you can," Ingrid was saying. "You've got the dagger I gave you? The way should be clear behind us, just go straight out."

Niyya nodded, her jaw tight. "I'm going straight to Raven Rock and then catching a boat for the mainland, and I'm never coming back here again." She shivered. "And when you find her - " She met Ingrid's eyes. "Don't make her death quick."

"Don't worry," Ingrid replied, her face uncharacteristically grim. "Talos guide you."

"Thanks." Niyya turned and ran off down the passage, surprisingly fleet; before long, she had vanished in the shadows. Ingrid gazed after her for a long time.

Talvas at last broke her concentration. "What ... " He swallowed, not sure he wanted to ask; but Ingrid turned to look at him and he felt he had to press on. "What happened to her?"

Ingrid didn't answer right away. She studied him, as if considering, for a moment; then, her features somber, she held out a slim volume. With a sinking feeling, Talvas saw it was wrapped in the same red leather as the volume they had found earlier, but this time with darker splotches - or stains - mottling the hide cover.

"I think you have the right to read this, Talvas," she said quietly.

_I don't want to,_ Talvas wanted to say; instead, he took the volume. It felt strangely heavy in his hands. Many of the pages were torn out or defaced, he saw with a sense of gratitude, but the pages to the back of the volume were whole.

Talvas read:

_I am stronger now. The heart stone kept me alive after Neloth's butchery. I can feel the bones in the ash calling to me. With the heart stone I can bind the spirits to bone and ash and raise a servant to do my bidding._

_Tonight I will seize control. These miners and fortune seekers are pawns of Neloth. I can feel them staring at me. I'm sure they are sending him messages, reporting on my every move. The only ones I can trust are the voices. They've never lied to me. They've shown me that these fools plan to betray me, just like Neloth._

_When they are all asleep, I will raise my ash spawn. Their brute of a leader will die first. I can see the lust in his heart. He may act all kind and generous, but I know what he wants. What they all want. They want the heart stone._

_I'll keep a few prisoners. I need test subjects for my experiments. There is more that the heart stone can do. I just need to try out a few ideas ..._

With a convulsive jerk, Talvas slammed the cover of the journal shut. _Madness,_ his mind was whispering. _Madness. _

Feeling himself pale, swallowing hard, he handed the book back to Ingrid. "I don't want to read any more," he said, hearing his voice quiver dangerously.

Ingrid took it from him, simply nodding, and tucked it away in her armor. She turned away and raised one hand; the blue glow of Clairvoyance surrounded it.

"We go the other way," Ingrid said, gesturing down the hallway. "Shouldn't be long now."

[*]

Talvas was very silent as he followed Ingrid down the corridor, trying desperately to keep his mind on what they were doing and to avoid any thoughts of Ildari. He didn't want to think about her, or Neloth, or himself, or anything; he just followed Ingrid, concentrating on putting one foot in front of another.

_Ingrid would protect me,_ he tried to tell himself. _Ingrid wouldn't let Neloth do that to me._ He did not know if Ingrid _could_ protect him from Neloth, but it was good to think, reassuring somehow.

_Neloth had always said, any Telvanni wizard was more than a match for a dragon. Does that mean, also more than a match for the Dovahkiin?_ He did his best to dismiss the thought.

They followed the stone corridor down to the end, where it gave way to a corridor hewn out of rock. _This must be the mining section of the ruins,_ Talvas thought. A wooden plank bridge branched off to the left, with a ramp on the right leading down.

Ingrid cast Clairvoyance again, and they descended the plank ramp, which deposited them on a roughly-hewn rock floor. They stood in a large room hacked out of the gut rock, with deposits of gold ore and the Orsimer metal orichalcum shining in the walls and floor. In the center of the room a pillar had been left intact, with a plank ramp spiralling up around it to where Talvas could see what looked like a sapphire geode. _More mining ruins,_ Talvas thought, and then it occurred to him, giving him a shiver, that the miners who had carved this tunnel, hoping perhaps to make their fortunes, were now all dead.

At the far end of the chamber was a large hewn arched opening, with three large mining lanterns strung across it on a cord. The lanterns were lit.

Ingrid was whispering under her breath. Even though he could barely hear her, he recognized the tone of a Shout.

"Ingrid?" Talvas asked.

"She's in there," Ingrid murmured in an undertone. "Come on."

_It's time._

[*]

The room past the arched entrance and hanging lanterns was large, with roughened walls. As Talvas's eyes adjusted, he began to make out other shapes: the stump of a low tower to his right, another to his left, a wooden ramp leading up and around the two fallen towers to a catwalk; a large round dais bulking ahead of them between shelves of rock. This seemed to have been part of the original building of Highpoint Tower, buried - like so many other things on Solstheim - when Red Mountain erupted, under tons of ash that hardened into stone.

"You've gone far enough!"

Talvas's eyes jerked up and to the left, where the ramp wound around the stump of tower. _It's her - _

Ildari was standing on a catwalk, many feet in the air above him. She had the gray skin of a Dunmer with whitish pale hair, somewhat unusual in a Dark Elf, and she was clad in orange and saffron robes. She wore some kind of harness around her chest, but Talvas could not make out any details. Even at this distance, her eyes glowed redly, two savage lights shining through the darkness.

Before he could speak, Ingrid stepped forward. _"Ildari!"_ she shouted. "Come down from there and you will not be harmed!"

"Not a chance, you worthless Nord. I know _exactly_ what Neloth sent you to do! Well, if he thinks a stupid Nord and his little spineless weakling Dunmer can finish me off, he's wrong! _Here!_" She raised her hands with a cry.

And the ash overlying the dais began to stir.

Three soul gems on poles stood around the dais, equidistant, forming the three points of a triangle. Now, the gems pulsed, light strobing out from them to strike the ash below. The ash was rising, rising into a solid and all-too-familiar form, and Talvas felt his heart miss a beat as he recognized what Ildari was conjuring.

"_Ingrid!"_ he shouted.

The roiling form of an Ash Guardian swirled and lashed out at Ingrid, who snarled and lunged back, holding the green glowing, ugly weapon she called the Mace of Molag Bal. Talvas raised his hands, reaching out with his mind for, not his trusty Flame Atronach but a Frost Atronach. Icy power coursed through him and then there was the familiar cold burst of air as the crystalline form of the Atronach burst into being. He could feel the part of his consciousness that controlled his Frost Atronach being taken up by the thing's cold alien logic - a logic that thought of nothing but chilling and freezing, a mind at one with to the snowy wastes of Northern Solstheim rather than the hot ash of the south.

_Forward,_ he directed the Atronach and it lumbered forward, the ground shaking under its icy feet and frost crystals trailing in its wake. It met the Ash Guardian with a ponderous crash, raising its ice fists and smashing the solid body of the beast again and again. Talvas wasted no time but drew the bow Ingrid had made for him and nocked an arrow to the string, hoping for a clear shot as the Dovahkiin herself waded into the fray, mace upraised.

It was over with one blow from Ingrid's mace. The Guardian collapsed into a heap of ash as tendrils of violet light rose from the remains. Talvas recognized it as a Soul Trap enchantment; her mace had drained the soul of the creature.

"Talvas!" Ingrid snapped at him. Flinching, Talvas leapt up onto the dais beside her.

Her expression was fixed in a scowl. "Gone," she spat between her teeth before Talvas could so much as say a word. "Got away while we were distracted. _Damn it!_"

Talvas wet his lips. "Well, she can't have gone far," he offered her, hopefully. His Frost Atronach lumbered closer and he shivered a bit again at the chill wind coming off the entity.

"Yeah ... " Ingrid gave a heavy sigh. "I was just hoping we could end this quick." She snorted in disgust, and Talvas realized in a flash of intuition that Ingrid was more peevish and irritated at things not having gone the way she had wanted them to go than genuinely enraged. She nodded to his Atronach. "Keep that thing handy. Frost rather than flame? Good thinking - I'm not sure what those Ash Guardian things are, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if fire healed them. Nicely done, Talvas."

Again, Talvas felt a sudden rush of warm pride and happiness, almost euphoria. He thought in that instant he would gladly have died for her.

He followed her as she wound her way past the large raised dais, then stopped to cast Clairvoyance. There was an opening in the wall to their right, and Talvas glanced into it. "This way?"

"No," she said. "Up the catwalk."

"All right." Talvas took one last look at the opening as Ingrid forged ahead. Through the gap, he could see into a small room with a wooden scaffolding in the middle; he could see some more skeletons in the room, along with a cart full of preserved foodstuffs - and a basket of flowers, and something that looked like a wedding wreath. _Who -_ He bit his lip, then forced himself to turn away.

The catwalk led over the lip of the ruined tower. In the room below, an Alchemy Lab lurked to the right of the ramp. Talvas knew that while Ingrid practiced alchemy rarely, she was highly skilled at it ; she made a beeline for the shelves beyond it that held ingredients, quickly and professionally looking over the bowls of dust and dried herbs.

There was a table with a chair near the ramp, with a candle, inkwell and pen on it. Talvas drifted toward it, and with a sinking feeling, saw a third leather-bound book.

_Don't look at it,_ he thought. _Don't look, don't look, you don't want to see -_

With a cold lead weight in his gut, he flipped it open:

_These warrens are well-suited to me. I can plot my vengeance undisturbed. I've created many ash spawn and summoned atronachs to do my bidding. Yet I know it isn't enough. Neloth is a wily wizard. I need more power. _

_I'm out of test subjects, except for Niyya. I saved her for last. She pretended to be my friend when I first came here. But now I know the truth. The voices have told me all about her lies and betrayal. She works with Neloth to bring me down. I've saved a special experiment just for her. It will take quite a while to complete._

_I can't attack Neloth directly, he's too powerful. But I can make his life uncomfortable. I've killed his steward. I've withered his home. Maybe I should poison his precious tea. I'll need a more capable servant for that. The ash spawn are too clumsy for such delicate work ..._

Abruptly Talvas slammed the journal shut. He did not want to read the details of whatever experiment Ildari had planned for the woman they had come upon, the woman they had saved. His stomach felt ill and he couldn't repress a shiver.

"Talvas?" Ingrid asked, glancing over her shoulder. "What are you doing over there?"

"Nothing." Talvas answered quietly, stowing the book inside his armor.

"Well, whatever you're doing, knock it off." Ingrid indicated the other catwalk. "We're close. I can feel it."

[*]

The two of them climbed stairs to another catwalk. This one led over the far wall of the tower to another wooden ramp down that opened onto a passageway carved out of rock. _By the miners?_ Talvas wondered. They proceeded along this passageway until it reached another stone wall, with a hole knocked in it. They stepped through into a castle corridor.

_There's a whole labyrinth of passages down here... _He wondered distantly if the miners had hollowed this warren out on their own or if it had already been here. _Before Ildari_.

He realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to start breathing again.

The new corridor dead-ended in a roof-fall to the left. Ingrid turned right and Talvas followed. It opened on a plank bridge across a large, empty round room. Ingrid smiled a bit.

"Recognize this?" she asked him.

Talvas started a bit, looking down. It was the room where Ingrid had summoned her Daedra Lord to set off the lightning trap; he could see the grand enchanter, the torture racks, the stones littering the floor a story below the bridge.

They proceeded across the bridge, into another stone corridor. Here Ingrid held up her hand, signalling for a halt. Talvas stopped, and listened to Ingrid mutter her **"Laas yah nir!"** shout. Her eyes narrowed.

"And there she is."

Talvas swallowed. "Can she get out?"

Ingrid shook her head. "I think this is it. We've run her to earth. Only a little bit further now."


	4. Chapter 4

Two more bends, and then the room opened out.

Talvas found himself looking over Ingrid's shoulder into an immense, two-storied room, one that must have been the great hall of the tower. The stone ceiling vaulted up, high above Talvas's head; halfway up the ceiling, balconies projected out, supported by stone columns, throwing the area under them into shadow and darkness. An arched stone bridge at the far end of the room joined the two balconies, and two chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting their dim light over all. The air was heavy with dampness and the scent of mold and dust.

Ildari stood at the halfway point of the stone bridge. Talvas could see her red eyes blazing even at that distance. It made him cold with fear. "So," Ildari called, her voice echoing into the vast cathedral space. "So, Dovahkiin, you found me. Congratulations. I hope it was worth it because you will _not_ be leaving here _alive!"_

Her hands swooped up, glowing, and lightning stabbed out at them.

_Shit!_ Talvas snapped both his hands up, throwing everything he had into a Grand Ward spell. The shield belled out in front of him and the lightning slammed into it, hard enough to stagger him. Beside him, he saw Ingrid's shield, matching and merging with his, and he reeled still further; the sheer _power_ of her shield - and she was not Dual Casting either - was almost enough to overwhelm him as their wards merged. _Dovahkiin -_

"One of us won't leave here alive, all right," Ingrid called back. "It's going to be _you,_ Ildari!" And with her free hand, she drew back. The blackish purple sphere of Conjuration flared in the middle of the room, and her Dremora Valynaz burst into being.

"_A challenger is near!"_ the Daedra bellowed, unsheathing its massive sword from its back.

And the battle was joined. Ildari gave a shout of rage and darted along the bridge to the left hand balcony. Fireballs lanced out from the balcony, the ground shuddering with their impact. _"Soul gem traps!"_ he heard Ingrid shout. The frozen part of his mind seethed and Talvas grabbed for his Frost Atronach, hearing its heavy tread behind him as the creature lumbered into the large cathedral room.

Ingrid's Dremora Lord was milling back and forth below the left-hand balcony, shouting defiance, deflecting the fireballs with its broad red-black blade. The grating overtones of its voice rattled Talvas's back teeth. He faded to the left to clear the door as his Frost Atronach lumbered through it. The cold breath of its presence sent chills along his back and neck.

The fireballs were lancing earthwards with greater and greater abandon; Ingrid's Dremora staggered as one hit, then another. It bellowed fury. _"I will feast on your heart!" _

Talvas reached out to the destruction magic that pulsed within and around him, shaping it into the form of a fireball - and froze. He could not see Ildari, had no idea where she was. _Somewhere to the left and above me, but where? _"Ingrid!" he shouted. "Ingrid!"

Something smashed into his shoulder and he whirled, almost releasing his spell; but it was only Ingrid, pounding him on the shoulder to get his attention. "There!" She pointed across the room to a small opening. "Stairs up!"

The fireballs were lancing down from the upper balcony with a thudding, steady regularity; Talvas heard Ingrid's dremora bellow again. "We can't get there!" he shouted.

"Speak for yourself!" Ingrid cried back, laughing wildly. Her eyes were shining brightly; Talvas could almost feel the same air of wild exaltation that filled her when she challenged dragons. She drew a breath and Shouted: **"Wuld nah kest!"**

And with that she was off, with the speed of a whirlwind, streaking across the floor so fast she was nothing more than a blur. She blew past her Dremora Lord, who grunted and staggered as yet another fireball smashed into him; then disappeared into the small door beyond.

_By the Nine - !_ Talvas cursed under his breath. _Gods damn it - damn it, damn it, damn it -_

Summoning his courage, he darted across the room, after Ingrid. He could hear his slow, clumsy Frost Atronach behind him. Fireballs were crashing to the ground all around him, sparks singeing his skin and hair; every moment he was sure one would strike him but somehow he evaded them all. His Frost Atronach was not so lucky; he heard it stagger a couple of times and felt its presence waver in his mind, but he couldn't take time to help it, couldn't stop for anything. It seemed like eternity before he plunged through the door and almost tripped over the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the balconies above them.

Ingrid's Dremora was still bellowing, and he could hear Ildari's high yells over it. Talvas stumbled a few times and crashed into a wall, banging his shoulder hard through the armor as he scrambled up the stairs. _"Ingrid!"_ he shouted. "_Ingrid!"_

"_Talvas!_" he heard her calling him. _"Up here! Now!"_

_She needs me - _ The thought lent wings to Talvas's feet. He flung himself out of the door onto the upper level of the right-hand balcony -

And ran straight into a spike of screaming pain. Liquid fire poured along his nerves, burning and sizzling them with sheer agony.

_Lightning, Ildari must have called lightning, she must have -_ The words repeated meaninglessly in his brain. All he could feel was the raw pain lancing along his nerves, rolling fire down his veins. He felt as if he were suspended in space, each heartbeat, each breath seeming to stretch out to forever -

Then he crashed to the floor, a shivering, twitching, boneless heap. He could dimly hear Ingrid's shouts and yells, the grating cries of her Conjured Dremora Lord; he could hear Ildari's answering shouts - could even hear the grating, thundering tread of his Frost Atronach; somehow through it all he managed not to lose his grip on the icy waste that defined the creature's consciousness - but all he could do was lie there gasping on the cold stone floor.

_Have to move - I have to move - Ildari - _Using all his strength, Talvas managed to pull his knees under him and sit up. Quickly, he cast a Close Wounds spell on himself, feeling the cool vigor of healing flow into him. His eyes cleared, his shaking waned, and Talvas jumped to his feet, swaying and almost falling again. _Ingrid needs me -_ The thought gave him the strength to hold on.

"Ingrid!" he shouted. Then as his eyes cleared, he made out where Ingrid was and what she was doing.

Ingrid was on the left hand balcony, across the stone arch. Her Grand Ward was up, belling out around her. Talvas could see the three soulstone traps that had been throwing fireballs down on them below; they were all disabled, their soul stones missing. Ildari had been driven into a corner and was holding a Destruction Magic staff. Talvas instinctively guessed it had been what she had used to cast the lightning. She was panting hard, clearly exhausted; her red eyes glittered in that dark gray face through strands of her yellow-white hair, and her teeth were showing in a snarl of rage.

In her free hand, Ingrid held the Mace of Molag Bal.

"Drop the staff!" she shouted. "Drop the staff and give yourself up!"

Ildari spat laughter between her teeth. "Not a chance! You think I don't know what will happen to me if I do?" 

"I can tell you what will happen if you don't," Ingrid growled and slid a step closer. Ildari's eyes flashed dangerously and in a sudden movement, she raised the staff as if to jab it at Ingrid -

"**Fus roh dah!"** Ingrid's Shout ripped the air. Ildari was lifted off her feet and slammed backward into the wall behind her, to slide down it into a crumpled heap, panting helplessly; the staff bounced from her grip to roll onto the floor. Ingrid quickly kicked it away.

"Talvas," Ingrid said without taking her eyes off the Dunmer woman. "Get the staff."

"Ingrid - ?"

"Do as I say." Her voice was cold; Talvas gulped, and darted forward to retrieve the staff. Ingrid didn't spare him so much as a glance.

Ildari lifted her head now, her hair falling back from her face. She was leaning against the wall, breathing hard. This side of the balcony appeared to be her living quarters, with a small alchemy lab, a chest, and a bookshelf forming one area, and then beyond a bed. Her eyes ran over both Ingrid and Talvas, and when she caught sight of Talvas, she sneered.

"So," she said, and Talvas couldn't help it: those gleaming red eyes made him tremble. "I know who you are."

"You - you do?"

"It's obvious." Ildari laughed scornfully. "You're Neloth's new lapdog, aren't you? I can see it in your face - you have the same sickening naivete I did when I was his apprentice. That's probably why he sent you after me. You think it's because he placed his trust in you, but really it's because you're expendable."

Talvas swallowed. "That's not true."

"Sure it's not." Ildari gave a superior smile. "When he took you on, did he tell you what happened to me?"

"He told me enough," Talvas said steadily, though his stomach squirmed. "Everyone knows that apprenticing with a master wizard of house Telvanni is a risky proposition. That's common knowledge."

That sneer deepened. "You think he's going to train you well. You think he's going to adopt you in time. I thought the same. Mark my words: he will do to you what he's done to me. My fate will be yours."

"No." Talvas swallowed. "No. You're wrong. He's going to train me. He's going to train me, you hear? And in time his power will all be mine. All of it! He's sworn - "

He felt the part of his mind that controlled his Frost Atronach slipping and yanked away from her, though the cold chill of fear was still in his heart. Ildari looked at him with total contempt. She turned her attention to Ingrid.

"And you. So you're the Nord lowlife he's gotten to do his killing for him. What did he promise you, I wonder? Gold? Is that what a Nord's honor can be bought for? Do you know - " She paused and looked at Ingrid from the corner of her eye. "That killing a Dunmer wizard brings an eternal curse on your soul? Did you know that, lowlife?"

Ingrid's face went white. Talvas wondered for a moment if she actually believed the old lie - for it _was_ a lie - until Ingrid stepped forward, raising her green-lit mace, and he realized that what he saw was not fear but fury.

"_I am no lowlife,_" she said in a voice thin with anger. "Neloth didn't know what he was hiring when he hired me. Know this, Ildari: _I bring you a message from my Mother._"

_From her -_ Talvas froze. The words slammed into him with the force of a boulder; his nerves sizzled and burned as they had when he had been struck by Ildari's lightning bolt earlier. There was no mistaking Ingrid's meaning. _Her mother - Her __**Mother**__ \- _ His entire conception of the Dovahkiin reeled on its axis. _No. It can't be true. It __**can't **__be -_

Ildari had also caught the implications; sheer horror spread across her face. She recoiled from Ingrid, holding out her hands. _"No - "_

Ingrid's face was set in that white mask of rage. She raised her horrible green-lit mace, then brought it down with an awful sick _thud. _Ildari slumped to the floor.

"Still breathing," Ingrid muttered. She knelt beside the woman's downed body, and Talvas now saw something that made him avert his eyes: Ildari had been wearing a leather harness around her upper body, centered around an open hole in her chest. Recessed within the hole was the red-and-black gleam of a heartstone.

Ingrid reached into Ildari's chest and ripped the heartstone free. Ildari's body spasmed and went limp. The violet tendrils of her soul twined themselves free from her lifeless corpse, and Talvas realized with another shiver Ingrid must have a black soul gem on her somewhere.

The Dovahkiin stood still for a moment, looking down at Ildari. Talvas stole a glance at her face, but could read nothing; her eyes were in shadow. Then, grinning, she tossed the heartstone in the air and caught it.

"I think Neloth ought to be happy with _this_ one at least," she said, then went down on her knees beside Ildari's corpse, quickly rifling the body. She began methodically to strip the orange and yellow robes off Ildari's body - robes, Talvas recognized, that were those of House Telvanni. He drew a breath, looking away. His control over his Frost Atronach was slipping; Talvas let it go with a _pop,_ and the creature winked out of existence.

"Talvas, what are you standing there for?" Ingrid reproved him. "Something wrong?"

"No ... " Talvas began slowly.

"But?"

Talvas drew another breath, trying to steady himself. "What you said ... it was a brilliant bluff, I have to admit. But - " He swallowed. "Are you sure you should have said it? Even if I was the only one to hear, the - " He had to stop and gather his nerve, not liking even to mention them. "The D-Dark Brotherhood," he managed at last, "isn't known for its sense of humor - "

"Not a bluff," Ingrid said absently, pushing herself to her feet. "Are you ready to move out? If we hit the road now, we may be able to make it back to Tel Mithryn before nightfall."

"Wait. Not a - "

"_Talvas._" Ingrid turned and looked at him, and he cut himself off immediately. Her gaze chilled him; his veins felt as if they were filled with ice water _Not a bluff,_ echoed in his mind. _Not a bluff ..._

"Good," Ingrid said tersely, apparently pleased by his silence. "Let's get going."

[*]

Talvas was mostly silent during the journey back to Tel Mithryn, not saying anything beyond monosyllables and those only in response to a direct question asked him by Ingrid. She could tell he was afraid, because of what she had said about herself and the Dark Brotherhood, and that was just fine with her, although she didn't care for the fact that he was skittering around as if she were some monster.

_Honestly, it's annoying when your follower is looking at you like you are a mass murderer,_ she thought. All right, Ingrid admitted on reconsideration, by some standards at least she _was_ a mass murderer, but still - Talvas was her follower. He and she were supposed to work as a team, and she didn't know how they could do that when he was acting like this.

_And he doesn't know the half of it..._

Still his skittishness was beginning to seriously grate on her, and she was more relieved than she cared to admit when the high mushroom tower of Tel Mithryn came into view at last.

Inside, they could hear muttering and crashes drifting down from above them - Neloth was clearly hard at work. Ingrid leapt straight into the beam of light and felt it waft her upwards, with Talvas following; a moment later they touched down on the landing platform of Neloth's upper story.

"Varonaaa! Oh, wait, she's dead. Drovas, is that you?" Neloth's shout came from the inner chamber where he kept his staff enchanter.

"Nope," Ingrid called back, striding forward with Talvas behind her. Neloth's back was bent over the staff enchanter, but he straightened when he heard her voice and turned toward her.

"Ah. You're alive. I hope that bodes ill for Ildari."

"Dead as a draugr," Ingrid replied easily. She took the heartstone from inside her armor and tossed it to him. "There's her heartstone, in case you needed proof."

"Well, I would have preferred a body part, but I suppose the heartstone will have to do." Neloth caught the stone out of the air easily and held it up to eye level. "Hmm. Yes, I remember this stone ... " He held it in one hand and turned it, passing his other hand over its shining surface and staring at it intently. "Yes, I see now. Fascinating indeed ... " He laid the stone down on the staff enchanter decisively. "Yes, this is definitely Ildari's heartstone. Well done. Very, very well done indeed. You've saved me a great deal of trouble, ah ... " He fumbled a bit as if trying to remember something. "You've saved me much trouble, Ingar."

"_Ingrid,_" Ingrid corrected.

"Whatever. It's not important."

"It is to me. Anyway - " She crossed her arms. "You promised me payment."

"Yes. I did, didn't I?" Neloth stroked his chin for a moment, studying her. There was a strange look on his face, as if he were seeing her in a new light. "When you first began working for me, I had no idea that you would turn out to be as useful an ally as you've become."

"Well, I'm - glad to be of service," Ingrid replied, faintly amused. "Does this mean you'll give me something good?"

"Yes, yes, of course." Neloth continued stroking his chin for a moment, looking at her as if considering something. "I have a staff for you, a Staff of Paralysis," he said, taking a staff from the rack along the wall; Ingrid judged it with a not-inexperienced eye to be master level. She didn't much use staves herself, but it would be worth something to the right buyer.

"But," Neloth continued as she reached to take it from him, "I have something else I would like to give you as well."

"Oh yeah?" Ingrid asked, securing the staff over her shoulder.

"Yes." Neloth drew himself up to his full height - still shorter than she was - and said, with the air of one conferring a great favor, "I would like to make you a member of House Telvanni."

"What?" Ingrid stared at him, trying to understand what she had heard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Talvas's gray face pale ashen; he pressed his lips together. Ingrid dismissed it.

"That's correct. From this day forward, you will be a member of my House." Neloth regarded her grandly. "Someone such as you will clearly be an asset to the Telvanni, and I've seen enough of your magic prowess to know that you are a match for the Telvanni wizards - _most_ of them, that is," he added severely. "You have proved yourself more than worthy, and therefore I decree that from this moment on, you, Ingrid, are a member of my House. With all the rights and benefits that accrue thereto."

His voice grew deeper and more formal as he intoned the words. He reached forward and seized Ingrid's hand, holding it palm to palm with his. Ingrid felt a tingle in her palm that slowly spread down her arm, like the prickling of many thousands of tiny pins and needles. She realized distantly that he had cast some sort of spell, and started to jerk away in shock, but Neloth had already released her.

"What did you just do to me?" she demanded.

"I cast a spell joining you to the house. Now wherever you go, our house magic will recognize you as one of its own. No need to thank me," he said proudly, "I know you are overwhelmed with gratitude."

"Is that so. They let Nords into the Dunmer great houses these days?" She raised one brow.

"It _is_ highly unusual," Neloth admitted, "but not without precedent. The great house Telvanni admits anyone who can meet its standards and show themselves worthy of belonging to our house. While those who qualify are almost always Dunmer, there have been a few from the other, lesser races that have come up to our standards and were permitted to join our house. And now - " He tilted his head, studying her. "You have definitely proved to be an asset, and it can only add to the glory of Telvanni to have the Dovahkiin as a member."

"So glad I could be of service," Ingrid replied dryly. "So now that I'm a member of your house, what does that mean?"

"For now? Not much." Neloth shrugged. "But in a few decades, when I return to Vvardenfell, you will be seen as Morrowind nobility." Again, he spoke as if he were granting her a tremendous favor. "For now, I would grant you quarters in Tel Mithryn, with a bed and a chest. You'll have to speak to Varona of course - oh, drat it all, she's still dead, isn't she? Drovas, then. When you see Drovas, tell him to see to it immediately." He folded his arms again. "There. Hopefully, that is enough of a reward for you, Ingun."

"_Ingrid."_

"Whatever. Now." His features contracted in a frown. "What are you doing standing around here? I have important experiments to conduct, and you are distracting me. Out of my way!"

He turned away decisively, heading back to the staff enchanter in the back room. Ingrid watched him go for a moment, bemused. She turned to look for Talvas ... but he was gone.

[*]

Ingrid found the Dunmer apprentice on the ramp outside the door of Tel Mithryn. He was leaning on the railing with his arms crossed, staring moodily at the ground below. He barely acknowledged her as she stepped out of the door and came up beside him.

"Everything okay?"

He grunted noncommittally without looking at her. She could see his red eyes glowing faintly in the shadow of the tower. Ingrid studied him for a long moment, then put her hands on her hips.

"Okay, Talvas, out with it. What's wrong?"

He glanced at her distrustfully, then moved away a bit. "Nothing."

"Don't say nothing." Ingrid reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him to look at her; his red eyes still avoided hers. "I'm not in the mood for games. What's the deal?"

She stared at him, hard; he jerked away, but shifted uneasily. Ingrid waited, sensing she had gotten through to him. After a moment, he glanced at her again.

"He adopted you."

"What?" she asked, though she had guessed this was the problem.

"Neloth. Adopted _you." _ He glowered into the distance; Ingrid had the impression - and it pleased her - that he was afraid to turn that glare directly on her. "And this after he _promised _me," Talvas brought out. "He promised me he would make me a member of House Telvanni. Adopt me, he said. Someday. When my apprenticeship was finished. When I had proven myself 'not incapable of learning.' And yet _you_-" His fists clenched.

Ingrid shrugged. "I didn't ask him to, Talvas. I had no idea he was going to do that until he did."

Talvas didn't seem to hear her. He continued to stare out over the rail, his face set in a deeply carved scowl.

"_Neloth_," he came out with at last, sounding bitter. "I've done everything I could to please him. I've done everything he's ever asked of me. I've submitted to every painful experiment, done every task he's set me no matter how menial, tedious or dangerous, accepted every insult, dealt with every humiliation - All because I knew, I _knew_ someday he would adopt me. Someday - someday I'd have a House. I'd have rank. I'd have standing. I'd no longer be the penniless orphan from the streets of Blacklight." His shoulders tightened "I put up with everything that came my way from him, and now - now - "

His voice broke. Ingrid started to reach out to him, but Talvas jerked away.

"I _hate_ him!" Talvas slammed his fists down on the railing. Thin threads of tears trickled down his cheeks, but his red eyes gleamed balefully. "I _hate_ him!"

"Talvas."

"I _hate_ him!"

"**Talvas.**" Ingrid added a trace of the _thu'um,_ enough to make the ground mutter uneasily, to get his attention. It worked; Talvas flinched, startled, and his gaze swung to her.

"You need to stop."

"Ingrid, I - "

"You need to stop," she repeated firmly, and Talvas fell silent, dashing at his eyes with the back of one hand. Nonetheless that gaze never wavered, and there was something behind those red eyes that Ingrid couldn't quite read.

She reached into her armor and took out a bottle of mead, pulling the cork out with her teeth.

"Here," she said. "Have some of this." She reached out to pat him on the shoulder, but Talvas jerked away, refusing to be comforted.

"I _hate_ him," he snarled. Then he swung on her, his glowing red eyes and sharp elven features twisted into something almost demonic. "I hate him - and sometimes, I hate _you,_ Dovahkiin."

His voice cracked; his features grew even sharper in spasm. He flung the words at her viciously, then recoiled as if realizing what he had said and expecting her to punish him.

"I didn't mean that," he stammered. "I didn't - "

"Ah, sure you did," Ingrid shrugged. "You weren't the first, and you probably won't be the last." She took another gulp from the mead bottle and then handed it to him. "Black-Briar reserve. A gift from Maven, last time I was in Riften."

Talvas took the bottle and swallowed obediently, though he grimaced at the taste. Ingrid studied him.

"I've killed a lot of people, Talvas," she said bluntly. "For good reasons and bad. I've killed for justice, for defense, for power, for coin, for reputation, by accident, and just because it seemed like a good idea at the time. But one thing I've never done is killed in hatred. Not anger," she clarified as he started to speak. "I've killed in anger lots of times. But never in _hatred_. And I won't either. Because to do that - you have to let that kind of hatred get a hold of you. It has to crawl into your soul and become a part of you, and when it does, it takes something. It consumes you - devours you. This hatred of Neloth - It's got to go, Talvas," she told him. "Because there's too much to you to allow yourself to be eaten up like this."

"Neloth doesn't think so," Talvas said bitterly. "He doesn't think there's anything to me at all."

"Well, Neloth doesn't know everything," Ingrid replied calmly. "I wouldn't have kept you as my follower if there wasn't something to you."

Talvas digested that in silence, his eyes on the ground. Ingrid was silent too, thinking back for a moment over those she'd killed. _How many?_ She couldn't even guess; she'd stopped counting years ago. Nord, Breton, Redguard, Imperial ... Argonian, Khajiit ... Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer, Falmer ... Orsimer ... so many, too many, far too many for one person to remember them all. Yet she supposed each of them had had faces, had had names ...

It took her a moment to realize Talvas was looking at her again. There was a strange, wary expression on his face; his red eyes shone oddly, and in an intuitive leap, Ingrid guessed what he was going to say.

"Dovahkiin ... " He paused a long moment, as if steeling his courage. "How did Borgakh die?"

Ingrid took a swallow of mead and answered with the exact truth. "I killed her. At the behest of the Night Mother."

She watched his expression change; the flickers of eye and brow and mouth as the awareness sank in.

"You - you - " He swallowed a bit. "_You_ k - killed her?"

"Yep," Ingrid nodded calmly.

"You - but - but _why?_"

"The Night Mother ordered it," she replied. "She informed me that someone had placed a contract on Borgakh and it was my duty to fulfill it."

"Who?" Talvas asked.

"It's not my place to question the Night Mother. I do as She bids me, that's all."

Talvas was silent again, clearly thinking. His red eyes were cast down, shadowed. Eventually he looked back up at her. He didn't speak aloud, but Ingrid could see the question in them.

"Would I kill you if the Night Mother demanded it? Oh yes," Ingrid said quietly.

The young Dunmer apprentice looked as if he had been struck. Conflicting emotions collided on his face. "I - I - but - "

Again, the question shone raw in his eyes. Ingrid sighed, and again answered with the exact truth.

"When Astrid first recruited me into the Dark Brotherhood, after giving me directions to their sanctuary, she told me, 'I'll see you at _home.'"_

She watched as Talvas swallowed that, blinking hard, his brows drawing together. "I thought - "

"Spit it out."

"I thought ..." Ingrid read anger on those sharp Dunmer features, and under that anger a deep, deep hurt. "I thought that - "

"You thought what, Talvas?"

"I thought you cared about me!" he burst out, fists knotted. His voice broke.

She frowned. "Well, I do care about you, Talvas," she offered him. "You're a good follower - "

"You mean, I _obey_ you," he said bitterly.

Ingrid ignored this. "We work well together. You're good in combat - not a half-bad spellcaster ... "

She trailed off, studying him as he stood tense and unhappy before her. "That's not enough, is it?" she said with a flash of insight.

His throat worked. "I thought - I thought I was_ special_ to you." Those baleful red eyes filled with tears; he dashed at them angrily with the back of one hand. "I wanted - I wanted - " He gave an unhappy choke that sounded like a sob and abruptly turned away, his shoulders taut and trembling. Ingrid studied him a moment, then sighed.

"You wanted something more, is that it? You wanted it to be like in the epic tales, with a hero and her boon companion, where they would go through Oblivion for each other." Talvas made that choked, almost-sob again and gave a sharp nod. "Those are _stories,_ Talvas," Ingrid said gently. "Those sorts of companionships don't exist in real life, at least not that I've seen. No matter what Ulfric and his little band would like to pretend," she said with a wry smile. "Nobody in real life actually does that. I'd be willing to bet if we could see them, even Ysgramor and his Companions weren't like that."

"I would have - " Talvas swallowed again. "I would have for you, Dovahkiin."

She smiled. "It's nice that you say that, and I bet you even believe it, at least right now. But when push came to shove - " She raised one brow. "I think you'd find going through hell to be much different than you imagine. Trust me on this. I know."

Talvas said nothing, but his shoulders shook. Ingrid regarded him.

"Maybe it was something else you wanted?" she asked, still gentle. "Would you have liked to share my bed, Talvas?" His startled gasp told her that she'd hit deep, perhaps deeper than he'd known himself. "You should have just asked. For a night, or two, or three - you're not bad-looking, and it's been a while," she said with a grin. "Or did you want something more? Well, I'm not looking for a lover right now, male _or_ female, and if I were - you're just not my type, unfortunately. Is that what you wanted? To be my lover, Talvas?"

Those taut shoulders heaved in a sob. "Your lover, Dovahkiin ... "

"I know, I know," she soothed. "You don't even know yourself, do you? Sorry, kid. It's a hard world, and nobody ever gets all of what they want." She touched him on the shoulder, and he jerked away from her roughly. He spun to face her, his red eyes blazing through his tears.

"Don't touch me, I hate you!" he almost screamed. And his fingers curled around the hilt of his Elven Dagger.

[*]

Neloth was a little put out to learn Talvas had died, but his anger soon passed. Before long, he had taken Dreyla Alor from Raven Rock as his new apprentice, and seemed to be much more satisfied with her than he had ever been with Talvas - not least, Ingrid observed, because Dreyla stood up to him far more than Talvas ever had. Ingrid, for her part, eventually wandered back to the Retching Netch and wound up hiring Teldryn Sero. They hit it off and worked well together; Ingrid was relieved to find Teldryn much steadier than Talvas. The two of them rattled about Solstheim for a while, then headed back to Skyrim. In Ingrid's armor she carried two newly filled black soul gems; Ildari's soul gem, and settled next to it, another. It glowed sullenly, unsteadily, as if it were watching through the darkness.

_Finis._


End file.
